


ACOMAF Part 2.3: The House of Wind Cont'd (Rhys POV)

by illyriantremors



Series: A Court of Mist and Fury: Rhysand's POV [4]
Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Angst, Court of Nightmares, F/M, Illyrian Stuff, Rhys POV, Smut, Starfall, The Inn Scene, acomaf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-20 21:39:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 37,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10671303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illyriantremors/pseuds/illyriantremors
Summary: Chapters 41-51 of ACOMAF from Rhysand's POV.Kicking off with Rhys's decision to steal the Veritas and subsequent hesitation over the role Feyre will play if she goes with him to the Court of Nightmares.





	1. Chapter 41: I Trust You

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter references some dialogue between Rhys and Azriel at the time of the Incident. The dialogue is taken from a Moriel fic I wrote called Shadowsinger that chronicles that time. It's listed on my AO3 if you feel so inclined. :)

Our goodbyes with Feyre’s sisters were short. Nesta seemed glad to be rid of us, queens and all. I didn’t argue with her for once. Nor did Cassian.

No one spoke as we flew home. Not even Feyre, who I carried through the warm, dry skies filled with an angry sun that seemed to sense the anger rolling underneath my skin.

Those queens were damned fools and they were going to make us all pay for it. Make all of them pay for it - my friends, my family, Feyre. Watching them all fly home, it would be my fault if they never made it. My fault if the court fell into ruin because the queens didn’t trust  _ me _ enough to hand over the Book.

I thought about everything I’d done as we landed at the townhouse. Every single way I’d defiled myself to save this city for centuries. Letting people think me a whore, a murderer, and a tormentor who delighted in less savory carnal acts. I set Feyre down and walked past an awaiting Amren, needing to look out on the city and know it was worth it, but as I sat by the fountain in the courtyard, I couldn’t face my people. My eyes found the ground instead.

A thick scratching noise scraped against the flagstone, as seats were pulled apart and my friends sat with me. “If you’re out here to brood, Rhys,” Amren said across from me, “then just say so and let me go back to my work.”

I had no retort to give her as I met her gaze, so sharp and piercing as ever. “The humans wish for proof of our good intentions,” I said. “That we can be trusted.”

Amren shot to Feyre in a blaze. “Feyre was not enough?”

Feyre winced slightly, and I felt the bond wobble between us. “She is more than enough,” I said, feeling rage snap through me again at the implications of what those queens had inferred of our meeting. “They’re fools. Worse - frightened fools.”

“We could... depose them,” Cassian suggested. “Get newer, smarter queens on their thrones. Who might be willing to bargain.” There was no trace of humor. It was, on the whole, a serious suggestion and one that we might have taken up in the past.

Because this was what my court did. This was what  _ I _ did, to maintain peace for a single city in the cold mountains of Prythian. Murdered innocent people and it made me a monster even the humans knew and feared.

And still, I considered it before shaking my head no. My gut twisting that my reasons had more to do with logistics than the morality of it.

“One, it’d take too long. We don’t have that time. Two, who knows if that would somehow impact the magic of their half of the Book. It must be given freely. It’s possible the magic is strong enough to see our scheming.” I pictured every one of those queens - even the sixth and missing one - and hissed. “We are stuck with them.”

“We could try again,” Mor said. Finally, I looked up and found her warm eyes watching me, understanding me even possibly. “Let me speak to them, let me go to their palace-”

“No,” Azriel said, cutting across her. Mor perked up, undoubtedly unused to Az’s fixed opinion against her, but the shadowsinger was set - and I couldn’t blame him. The things he’d told me of the palace were more than simply dangerous.

That didn’t stop Mor from staring at him incredulously, her voice sharpening as she redirected her attention to him. “I fought in the War, you will do well to remember-”

“No,” Azriel said again, staring right back at her determined. Every muscle in his body seemed to flex. “They would string you up and make an example of you.”

“They’d have to catch me first.”

Azriel’s wings shifted. Cassian and I shared a look and both equally tensed. “That palace is a death trap for our kind,” Azriel said, halfway toward getting up out of his seat and sitting next to Mor if it would convince her - if it would keep her safe. “Built by Fae hands to protect the humans from us. You set foot inside it, Mor, and you won’t walk out again. Why do you think we’ve had such trouble getting a foothold in there?”

Mor opened her mouth to retort, but Feyre spoke first. “If going into their territory isn’t an option, and deceit or any mental manipulation might make the magic wreck the Book... What proof can be offered? Who is - who is this Miryam?” Mor’s mouth closed, the moment forgotten. History flooding back to all of us as we looked at Feyre. “Who was she to Jurian, and who was that prince you spoke of - Drakon? Perhaps we... perhaps they could be used as proof. If only to vouch for you.”

My heart slowed down, a weight pressing in. Whatever we did moving forward, it seemed all of our options would betray somebody.

“Five hundred years ago,” I said, “in the years leading up to the War, there was a Fae kingdom in the southern part of the continent. It was a realm of sand surrounding a lush river delta. The Black Land. There was no crueler place to be born a human - for no humans were born free. They were all of them slaves, forced to build great temples and palaces for the High Fae who ruled. There was no escape; no chance of having their freedom purchased. And the queen of the Black Land...”

I trailed off, Mor picking up the pieces my scars barred me from recalling. “She made Amarantha seem as sweet as Elain.”

“Miryam was a half-Fae female born of a human mother. And as her mother was a slave, as the conception was... against her mother’s will, so, too, was Miryam born in shackles, and deemed human - denied any rights to her Fae heritage.”

A cruel, dark blemish on the history of our kind was that era, no war needed.

“Tell the full story another time,” Amren said, clipped and rritated. “The gist of it, girl is that Miryam was given as a wedding gift by the queen to her betrothed, a foreign Fae prince named Drakon. He was horrified, and let Miryam escape. Fearing the queen’s wrath, she fled through the desert, across the sea, into more desert... and was found by Jurian. She fell in with his rebel armies, became his lover, and was a healer amongst the warriors. Until a devestating battle found her tending to Jurian’s new Fae allies - including Prince Drakon. Turns out, Miryam had opened his eyes to the monster he planned to wed. He’d broken the engagement, allied his armies with the humans, and had been looking for the beautiful slave-girl for three years. Jurian had no idea that his new ally coveted his lover. He was too focused on winning the War, on destroying Amarantha in the North. As his obsession took over, he was blind to witnessing Miryam and Drakon falling in love behind his back.”

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard Amren say so much in one go.

“It wasn’t behind his back,” Mor said, a near snarl. “Miryam ended it with Jurian before she ever laid a finger on Drakon.” She looked at Amren with a trace of that same regal warrior she’d stared the mortal queens down with. A queen in her own right, ready to defend her friends to the death - not against Amren, but in that war she’d lived through. I didn’t want to think of her fighting in one again.

Amren brushed her off easily. “Long story short, girl, when Jurian was slaughtered by Amarantha, and during the long centuries after, she told him what had happened to his lover. That she’d betrayed him for a Fae male. Everyone believed Miryam and Drakon perished while liberating her people from the Black Land at the end of the War - even Amarantha.”

Mor’s eyes flashed. She’d been there, marching through the sand and hell fires to help Miryam free her people.

“And they didn’t,” Feyre said, putting the pieces of the story together. “It was all a way to escape, wasn’t it? To start over somewhere else, with both their peoples?” Mor and I nodded simultaneously. “So why not show the queens that? You started to tell them-”

“Because,” I said, the words sounding tired - exhausted - even to me, “in addition to it not proving a thing about  _ my _ character, which seemed to be their biggest gripe, it would be a grave betrayal of our friends. Their only wish was to remain hidden - to live in peace with their peoples. They fought and bled and suffered enough for it. I will not bring them into this conflict.”

“Drakon’s aerial army was as good as ours,” Cassian said softly, a thought more than a suggestion. “We might need to call upon him by the end.”

I shook my head.

No, not Drakon. Not Miryam. Not their armies nor their families, nor mine. And not the queens’ own lives forfeited for new ones. Each of those routes either ended with too much death or would not be enough to assure the queens of  _ my _ own guilt.

If we were to get the book,  _ I _ would have to take the risk again to right myself before them.

And I only knew one way to do that.

“So, what do we offer them instead?” Feyre asked. Everyone looked to me. “What do we show them?”

The queens wanted to know me - the real, true me. Then I would pay a steep price to give it to them if it would save us - save my city and my mate that I’d written so desperately about to those women.

I swallowed, my throat feeling raw. “We show them Velaris.”

“What?” Mor said. I couldn’t meet her eyes.

“You can’t mean to bring them here,” Feyre said hesitantly.

“Of course not,” I replied. “The risks are too great, entertaining them for even a night would likely result in bloodshed. So I plan to merely show them.”

“They’ll dismiss it as mind tricks,” Azriel said, no doubt thinking of those beautifully laid dangers he’d met in their court.

Finally, I stood. I was tired. I was hungry. And I felt empty. “No, I mean to  _ show _ them - playing by their own rules.”

“What do you mean, High Lord?” Amren asked, her eyes narrowed. But I faced my cousin, and she saw me for what I meant. Her skin paled, another curse at my feet to carry forward in this fight.

“Send word to your father. We’re going to pay him and my other court a visit.”

To my side, Feyre’s head slowly lifted to meet mine. The bond pulled taut.

Just one more curse to carry.

* * *

“What about-”

“No,” I said, stifling a sigh as I stared at the dark red liquid swirling inside my wine glass. All of us save Amren sat the dinner table. Mor’s face was heavy. “That city is too far north - too near Illyrian territory. If  _ my _ reputation proceeds me to the mortal realms, the proximity to Illyrian territory may very well also. It doesn’t matter anyway. You’ve all suggested half a dozen cities already. None of them will hold as Velaris will.”

Mor looked away tersely, her lips tight. Cassian sat on one side staring hard at her, concern urging him to do something. He’d been restless since we’d sat down to dinner - almost as restless as Azriel’s shadows, who’d leave soon to contact his spies now that the plans were set for tomorrow’s visit to the Hewn City.

“I still don’t understand,” Feyre said on my right, “why any city will work, Velaris or no. What’s the Veritas? Why will the queens trust it?”

I parted my lips to answer, but Mor’s voice rang clear across the table even if she wouldn’t look at Feyre - or me. “The Veritas is my family’s most ancient gift,” she explained. “The wielded holds the ability to show truth - to show the world exactly as it is anywhere, at any given time, among other things. It was forged and given to my family that our bloodline might share that power and merge it with our natural magic. It is why the queens could hear my story and know that it was truth, even if...” Azriel leaned forward across from Mor as she ran her lips together, staring hard at her plate. “Even if it didn’t matter in the end anyway.”

“With the Veritas,” Cassian cut across for her, “the queens will be able to see Velaris and know with absolute certainty that it is real, safe, and most importantly, that Rhys isn’t the evil prick they think he is.”

Cassian’s eyes darted quickly to me, as if I might take offense, but I shook my head. He gave me a short nod.

“And you’re positive,” Feyre asked, hesitantly crossing her arms on the table as she looked at Mor, a line creasing her brow, “that there’s  _ nothing _ else we can show them? Nothing that would equally prove-”

“No,” I said. Her eyes snapped to me, considering.

“Even...” She swallowed, allowing herself to remember even as the vision of us wailing and crying out across Amarantha’s blood-strewn floor together flashed across the bond and caused us both to cringe.

“Definitely not,” I said, breaking my gaze off. I took a sip of wine and sat the glass back on the table, my fingers picking at the stem. “Velaris is the only way. Tomorrow, we winnow in close to the base of the mountain and fly the rest of the way. You three,” and I pointed to Mor, Cassian, and Feyre - wishing it wasn’t Feyre, “will help me distract Keir while Azriel slips out to get the Orb. We stay no longer than necessary to avoid suspicion.”

Mor stood up abruptly from the table. “If we’re done here, I need to start preparing.”

“Mor-” Cassian said, jerking at her motion, and standing quickly to follow her.

But my cousin only made it a few steps, muttered, “I need to write my father to let him know we’re coming,” and winnowed. Her skin was ghost white.

Cassian ran a hand through his hair, his temper perhaps the only sentiment stronger in the room than my guilt. Azriel stood and walked over to his brother, placing a shadow-encrusted hand on his shoulder. “I’ll find her after I sort my spies out,” he said quietly.

“She’s not going to-”

“I know where she’ll be. And yes, she will.” They shared a hard look, one so private and intimate even to me, that Feyre and I both looked away.

A pause. And then, “Okay.”

Azriel left, Cassian not far behind with barely even a goodbye. A lengthy silence ensued before Feyre announced she was going for a walk. I didn’t object.

I had the table cleared with a snap of my fingers the second she left the door, my wine glass replaced with something much deeper and of a more amber coloring.

The house was too still and quiet as I poured a fresh glass. I thought of Mor and hated -  _ hated _ \- the way she refused to look at me before she left. It felt exactly the way losing Feyre’s first smile to Tarquin that morning she wouldn’t meet my gaze in Adriata had felt: broken and isolating.

I took a long sip of that drink, feeling it burn in my throat, just as it had when I’d received the blood rubies.

Tarquin.

Feyre.

Mor.

_ Mor _ .

She had told me many times over the years that she was not bothered to be a queen in a city that once made her a slave of its own liking. There were days she returned from the Hewn City looking empowered for having held court over the family she despised for what they’d done to her.

And then there were days like today, where I asked too much of her - to steal from her own family, to get perhaps  _ too  _ close to history. And it was only that sheer determination and duty to the crown Mor and I shared that kept her from breaking in two.

That, and Azriel. I hoped for both our sakes that he resolved his discussions with his spies and found my cousin quickly. Hurting her... was not something I wanted. Not  _ ever _ . She deserved better than that for all she’d given our family since the day I’d met her. All of this city and more.

And yet... tomorrow she would wear the mask. We all would. Cassian the alpha male, dominating with his siphons and that aura that crackled like fire to fill a mountain top. Azriel, the phantom that would haunt and vanish like smoke, injecting fear into every heart he touched. And Feyre.

I did not want to think of what Feyre would have to become if she came tomorrow.

Feyre - who was out now looking at my city and possibly wondering if what she’d said about it when she escaped the Attor was no longer true. Feyre, who was now my friend. Would I sacrifice that friendship, that hope for more, to keep my crown -  _ our crown _ , the bond begged me to think - safe? Could I?

I’d already forced the scene from filling out in my mind half a dozen times at dinner, knowing how she would hate me for the mask that  _ I _ would wear tomorrow if she came. The one that had forced her to return to a place of pain and torture where I’d painted her body, drugged her, and splintered her bones. It wouldn’t matter why I’d done those things. Only that I’d done them at all.

Maybe Mor and Amren were right. Maybe I should... tell her.

I waited for her in the foyer near the stairs and wasn’t left waiting long. Feyre returned within close to an hour of her initial departure, her cheeks flushed from the walk and crisp air.

She took one look at me and halted, brows knitting together. “What’s wrong?” My heart sank.

Concern. My friend was concerned - for me.

“I’m debating asking you to stay tomorrow,” I said. Her chin jerked to one side brusquely, her arms crossing.

“I thought I was going.” Her eyes pleaded silently with me behind those few words. Behind that mind that thought I would lock her up like  _ him _ . I could neither take her, nor leave her. Either way, I was damned.

I ran a hand through my hair, trying to stay upright. The stairs looked inviting. “What I have to be tomorrow, who I have to become, is not...” Feyre’s chin dipped waiting, “it’s not something I want you to see. How I will treat you, treat others...”

“The mask of the High Lord,” she finished when I could not.

_ ‘Whore...’ _

Both of us. We’d both be whores if Feyre went.

“Yes,” I said, and sat down, unable to stand any longer. The angle of the stairs felt sharp against my back, like the throne I would sit on in a matter of hours.

Feyre watched me from where she still stood, that momentary doubt and fire gone. “Why don’t you want me to see that?”

_ Tell her, Rhys. Tell her the truth _ .

_ Mor- _

_ Tell her, damn it, or I’m not going tomorrow _ .

I sighed.

_ Alright, Mor - for you. _

“Because,” I said slowly, “you’ve only started to look at me like I’m not a monster, and I can’t stomach the idea of anything you see tomorrow, being beneath that mountain, putting you back into that place where I found you.”

Feyre held my gaze, and... after a moment, I watched that crease in her brow release, felt the bond go soft and pliant. But her eyes - they were not afraid as they stared into the darkness.

“Let me help,” she said, resolute. “In whatever way I can.”

What would happen to that resolution if I brought her, dressed her up and objectified her before my entire court? “The role you will have to play is not a pleasant one.”

Feyre was walking purposefully toward me instantly, taking the small spot next to me on the stairs. She sat so close, our arms and knees brushed. That one simple touch meaning almost as much to me as the way she stared straight into my eyes past the stars and the bleakness and whispered, “I trust you.”

_ My friend - my mate. _

_ My trust. _

“Why did Mor look so disturbed when she left?” Feyre asked.

I swallowed roughly. By now, Azriel would be with Mor. And she’d be... better. I hoped.

“I was there, in the Hewn City, the day her father declared she was to be sold in marriage to Eris, eldest son of the High Lord of the Autumn Court.” Feyre’s eyes went wide - and rightfully so. “Eris had a reputation for cruelty, and Mor... begged me not to let it happen. For all her power, all her wildness, she had no voice, no rights with those people. And my father didn’t particularly care if his cousins used their offspring as breeding stock.”

That day had been... horrifying. And Mor had not begged me to save her so much as wept and mourned and all but thrown herself off the edges of the world if it would save her somehow.

“What happened?” Feyre’s voice came out particularly tiny. I missed the amber decanter I’d left sitting on the dining table.

“I brought Mor to the Illyrian camp for a few days. And she saw Cassian, and decided she’d do the one thing that would ruin her value to these people. I didn’t know until after, and... it was a mess. With Cassian, with her, with out families. And it’s another long story, but the short of it is that Eris refused to marry her. Said she’d been sullied by a bastard-born lesser faerie, and he’d now sooner fuck a sow. Her family... they...” A sharpness stung behind my eyes. I’d never forget the way she’d... how her stomach had... and Cassian, Azriel.  _ My cousin - my Morrigan. _

I scraped the pain off my throat enough to admit to Feyre, who sat dutifully at my side through every word, “When they were done, they dumped her on the Autumn Court border, with a note nailed to her body that said she was Eris’s problem.” Feyre sucked in a breath. I’d never felt the bond so quiet since those weeks of silence in between visits from the Spring Court. “Eris left her for dead in the middle of their woods. Azriel found her a day later. It was all I could do to keep him from going to either court and slaughtering them all.”

_ Mor- _

_ She’ll be okay. _

Still, I’d had to restrain my brother with magic to keep him from leaving her bedside and flying back to those woods of fall.

_ Thank you for finding her. _

_ I would have gone to the ends of the world and back to find her. _

Eyes like stone, he’d had that day.

_ I know you would have. _

That was the day we’d become family - all four of us. I would not let it break. Not then. Not now. Not  _ ever _ .

_ Too _ much. It was always too, too much, it seemed.

Whether she felt the tension in my veins or simply needed to relieve her own, Feyre’s gently took my hand and allowed me the privilege of keeping it. Her skin was soft as I brushed idle strokes back and forth over her palm.

And then she told me in that same resolute voice that would not, could not be broken anymore, “Tell me what I need to do tomorrow.”

I sighed, but squeezed her hand and told my friend the role she would play in my Court of Nightmares.


	2. Chapter 42: This Mask Does Not Scare Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rhysand takes Feyre to the Court of Nightmares as a distraction while Azriel steals the Veritas. Quite a show ensues on the throne in front of the entire court.

I felt sick. For the first time in centuries, power was not my friend accompanying me to the Hewn City - the Court of Nightmares. Though it would have to be my ally if we were going to accomplish this mission.

It wouldn’t be like last time, with Tarquin. I wouldn’t let it. We would enter, Azriel would swoop in to snatch the Veritas, and we would leave.

But Feyre would see every moment.

I’d once pledged to her that she would not become a weapon nor a pawn so long as she worked with me. Holding her tightly against my chest as we flew through the cold mountain air towards the gates, Cassian and Azriel flying nearby, the memory tasted of a lie on my tongue. I couldn’t look at her knowing how Mor would transform her when she received us. So I only held on more tightly instead.

Feyre had sat with me for a long while after I’d explained her role in today’s proceedings. When we’d finished and I was certain she understood, would decide it was too vile and demoralizing to go through with and walk out, she squeezed my hand tighter.

And now we flew, all I could think of as I stared at the slowly melting snow and surrounding forests was whether she would forgive me today’s grievances only to enter that mountain and see Amarantha anew - and panic.

Panic the way my heart did now, beating away a wild tension rapidly in my chest.

It was an odd contrast to the trees that sat so silently near us as we flew by. Not even the brief stirrings of the wind seemed to ruffle their branches. The birds hiding among their number remained utterly silent.

So cold, my court. So unyielding and stern, and -

“Amren and Mor told me that the span of an Illyrian male’s wings says a lot about the size of... other parts,” Feyre said in the middle of that great silence. It was an effort not to jerk in surprise through the air currents. Of all the -

Briefly, I glanced at her, and saw a shy, coy face watching me. “Did they now,” I said offhandedly. Feyre shrugged as though we were merely discussing the ease into spring the weather had taken.

“They also said Azriel’s wings are the biggest.”

_ Of course they did. _

I was going to murder my cousin after this trip. Feyre bit her lip in a  _ near _ smirk and slid her gaze carefully to my brother, flying slightly ahead of us now. My heart sped up for entirely new reasons.

“When we get home, let’s get out the measuring stick, shall we?”

Feyre’s fingers danced across my forearm and pinched. The grin I flashed her just before tucking my wings in tight was undeniable. Her arms went wild scrambling for purchase around my chest - my neck - as we fell, dropping several feet. But the scream the fall elicited out of her as Feyre buried her face in at the side of my neck was sensational.

My wings fanned out at my back, sending us into a smooth even glide with a few measured pumps. Ahead, Azriel barrel rolled over, his expression questioning at Feyre’s cry.

_ Biggest span, my ass _ , I thought, as my subsequent grin and laughter sent him back off.

Tilting my chin down, my lips found the little pathway between Feyre’s ear and neck. “You’re willing to brave my brand of darkness and put up one of your own, willing to go to watery grave and take on the Weaver, but a little free fall makes you scream?”

She didn’t even move so I could better hear her reply through the wind whipping about us. Her arms were locked firmly around my neck, fingers gripping at my leathers. I quite liked her clutching at me like this, holding me tight, making her scream -

“I’ll leave you to rot the next time you have a nightmare,” she said, poison behind those words. More and more these days, I seemed to come up with the proper antidote.

“No, you won’t,” I teased. “You liked seeing me naked too much.”

“Prick.”

But her fingers tightened on me. And it loosed a deep laugh rumbling out of my chest. The gates to the Hewn City loomed not terribly far off in the distance, but for just a moment, they were a little further away in my mind.

I shifted my arms around Feyre as she adjusted against me, her head still buried at my neck. Something brushed along the underside of my wing, too quick to register, until -

A tremor ran down the column of my spine as Feyre softly ran one delicate finger over my wings, forcing a low groan to hiss out between my lips. A groan that was guttural and primal and enough that Feyre snatched that mischievous, unsuspecting little finger right back.

“That,” I said a bit breathlessly, trying not to register what my cock was or wasn’t doing in response, “is very sensitive.”

My eyes met Feyre’s as she quickly tilted her face up against my chest to consider me. “Does it tickle?”

Cauldron no - not if the good degree of heat that had already pooled below my waist was any indication.

I thought a moment, excusing myself to the trees and mountaintops to shove certain inclinations aside, and whispered, “It feels like this,” before blowing softly into Feyre’s ear. She rewarded me with a shudder in her back and better access to that beautiful damned neck of hers. The skin was hot and just a hair’s breath beneath where my lips rested.

“Oh,” was all she said, a small gasp. I smiled and removed myself from that delicate skin of hers.

“If you want an Illyrian male’s attention, you’d be better off grabbing him by the balls. We’re trained to protect our wings at all costs. Some males attack first, ask questions later, if their wings are touched without invitation.”

I should have known Feyre wouldn’t simply leave it there, though I didn’t quite expect, “And during sex?” to come flying so readily out of that mouth. A flicker of pleasure swam through that delicious pool of heat in my crotch.

“During sex, an Illyrian male can find completion just by having someone touch his wings in the right spot.”

“Have  _ you _ found that to be true?”

Now I couldn’t look away. Feyre’s eyes were dancing on my chest and slowly rising higher to meet me -  _ toy _ with me even. Cauldron - what would she do once we were  _ inside _ the mountain?

“I’ve never allowed anyone to see or touch my wings during sex,” I admitted. “It makes you vulnerable in a way that I’m not... comfortable with.”

Feyre peered off into the mountains - bored, apparently, and drawled, “Too bad.”

“Why?”

She shrugged, her face appearing rather taut. And damn me to my grave, I hated that even in ways she might never find herself concerned with, I might have disappointed her somehow.

And yet - “Because I bet you could get into some interesting positions with those wings.”

A roar of laughter stumbled blindly out of my chest, and before I knew what I was doing, my head was nuzzling into Feyre’s side, inhaling the fresh scent of her hair that sped my blood along at a tumultuous pace, grazing the cool skin of her scalp beneath with my nose. My lips met her ear, readily parting to apply a reckless kiss of appreciation.

That’s when the first arrow flew by.

_ Fuck! _

An army of deadly darts followed. I snatched one clean out of the air and took one look at the ash makings before my hands had snapped it into mere fragments.

Feyre’s body went rigid against me as we hurtled down to the ground in immediate descent. I wouldn’t winnow lest we lose whoever assaulted us. Magic tore from me to form a shield against the arrows trailing us - trailing me and  _ my mate _ , seeking to wound or kill, I didn’t want to know. My arms engulfed Feyre in response, every instinct in my body telling me what protecting my mate’s life truly meant.

Cassian and Azriel were at our side in seconds, blue and red orbs blazing around them to form their own shields. Shields I had seen many, many times over the centuries in battles and in wars.

Blood pounded in my ears vying for dominance over the brittle wind.

This was  _ my _ court. And someone had infiltrated. The Attor hadn’t been lying that day Azriel carved him up and feasted on his dirty little secrets.

The moment we slammed into the ground, I handed Feyre to Cassian - barely registering she was unharmed - ready to demand payment from whatever bastards were roaming my mountains.

“Take her to the palace,” I told Cassian, who’s eyes were made of fire and sun, “and stay there until I’m back. Az, you’re with me.”

Cassian didn’t so much as blink. But Feyre stepped away from him, retreating back towards the embrace I’d made her quit. “No,” she said.

I whirled around back around from where I’d turned to face her and was not proud of the snarl that ripped from my mouth. “What?”

_ My mate. _

_ My - my mate _ .

But Feyre was strong. And she did not budge.

“Take me with you,” she said, neither a request nor a demand. I steadied a breath. My wings, my arms, my everything - collapsing inward. Feyre’s gaze glossed over me noticing it all, a huntress marking every detail. “I’ve seen ash arrows,” she said, her words no more than a breath of air. “I might recognize where they were made. And if they came from the hand of another High Lord... I can detect that, too. And I can track just as well on the ground as any of you. So you and Cassian take the skies. And I’ll hunt on the ground with Azriel.”

_ You think like an Illyrian _ .

And it was still true.

Not only true, but just.

Hybern. Tamlin. Some other beast I knew not about. My own people... Even Tarquin now. I did not know what sought after us. But Feyre could. And I trusted her to do it. Trusted my - my friend.

My friend through danger and doubt, who had not left me to myself these many weeks. And who now stood straighter, no longer starved, but confident and assured of who she was becoming.

I turned to Cassian, my mind searching rapidly to see the details. “Cassian - I want aerial patrols on the sea borders, stationed in two-mile rings, all the way out toward Hybern. I want foot soldiers in the mountain passes along the southern border; make sure those warning fires are ready on every peak. We’re not going to rely on magic.” Cassian nodded, just as my other brother sent shadows spilling out of him in a frenzied rhythm. “When you’re done,” I told Az, “warn your spies that they might be compromised, and prepare to get them out. And put fresh ones in. We keep this contained. We don’t tell anyone inside that court what happened. If anyone mentions it, say it was a training exercise.”

The shadows cleared, sent off somewhere I knew naught. Both their siphons continued to glow with a steady, near violent energy, as though they might burst at any moment.

And when I looked at Feyre, she held her head high, her eyes clear and sharp. The huntress called from hiding in the dark caves of the mountainside, ready to fight once more.

“We’ve got one hour until we’re expected at court.” Feyre held my gaze. “Make it count.”

* * *

We didn’t find anyone. Not so much as a single fallen arrow. Cassian and I flew until we’d carved the earth up from above with our eyes, but there was nothing in those trees.

Nothing we could discern, at least. It set my teeth on edge. Not a good start to our visit.

“When we get-”

“I know,” Cassian cut me off. Mor had taken Feyre away already to change and go inside. I stood with my brothers away from the gates where the sentries might overhear. “Set the new rotations as soon as we’re back. It’s as good as done already.” Azriel affirmed his own intent with a nod. My chest still felt tight. “Who do you think was behind it?”

There was a pause before I answered during which Azriel’s shadows stilled, listening - preparing. “Hybern more than likely. That’s twice now they’ve found us. Found Feyre.”

Cassian’s voice was sharp as an Illyrian blade. “The Attor.” I nodded. Even after the affairs in Adriata, I doubted the two incidents of attack on Feyre were unafiliated. Cassian turned on Az and groaned, “Why couldn’t you have just killed that sick fuck and saved us all this trouble.”

“Believe me, it would have been a pleasure.” Az’s face paled slightly as a flicker of black kissed the shadowsinger’s ear. “It’s time.”

I sighed, avoiding their gazes and finding that cold, calculating mask I wore all too well. It felt oddly comforting to slip behind it, where Feyre might not see too much of me. Where she and I might both be safe from whatever ash would chase us next.

And there would be a next, and a time after that.

An eternity of war and high lords chasing after her.

An eternity of death.

A warmth pressed upon my shoulder. I looked up to find Cassian’s hazel eyes, equally soft and warm as that touch, boring in to me. “One hour,” he said. “It’s just one hour. That’s all she’ll see.”

“But it’s enough,” I replied. He shook his head.

“Nah. It’s not.” He brought his free hand round to my other shoulder and squared me up. “She’s fine. And you know she is. So will you stop worrying so much and let us deal with keeping both your asses safe today?” He smirked. “You know I get cranky when you try to do it yourself.”

I put my hands in my pockets, eyes scoffing away to land on Azriel who merely shrugged. “You do kind of suck at it,” he said.

Cassian shirked his head as if to say,  _ See? _

“Fine,” I relented and stepped out of Cassian’s hold. “Let’s go.”

Azriel tipped me a small, easy smile before his wings beat into the air. My own stretched wide behind me, but I stayed a moment to look at Cassian - bastard, commander, brother. “Cass-”

“I know,” he said. “I always know.”

I nodded. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet. Just promise me one thing?”

“Name it.”

“Kick Kier’s ass in there today.”

Our twin smiles were greedy as we flew to the mountain.

* * *

For the first time in 500 years, I was nervous stepping through those gates. The Court of Nightmares had never been my home, nor even a place within in my own court that I took interest in ruling. The beasts it housed were cretins, the lot of them, easy to rule and I had enough power several times over to drown them all if I wanted. Wearing the cruel mask of the High Lord they cowered before was easy.

But today was not that day. Today, someone important would be watching. Someone I still couldn’t quite fully understand how she felt towards me, much less how she would feel after I’d exposed her to the monster that would be pawing at her in front of the court I despised.

Cassian and Azriel stood before me at the handles of the doorway that would lead me to my throne. Beyond, Feyre readied herself beside my cousin. I could hear the cutting voice of Kier, Mor’s father, as they met, my gut twisting in revulsion.

Memories of that night centuries ago, when she’d only been seventeen and untested, curled through me as I remembered how I’d barely been able to tell it to Feyre the night previously. I didn’t allow myself to slip into Keir’s mind now and witness how he was experiencing Feyre, lest I slip and splinter him to ash.

Azriel budged almost unnoticeable, hearing the exchange of words too. “Ready?” Cassian asked, brows raised at me.

Easy as flicking a button open on a shirt, I lifted the damper on my power. Darkness flowed off my body in rippling waves, so thick with fog that you couldn’t tell where the black of my clean, crisp tunic ended and the smoke began. The stars that swirled atop my head shimmered with uncompromising light weaving a thick crown even those sheathed in the darkest reaches of the mountain could have felt.

I took comfort in the feel of it all, of releasing my true self that I so seldom was able to become. My oldest friend, the darkness that soothes. Only here did that darkness appear so abhorrent.

I nodded at Cassian and together, he and Azriel pulled back the doors. I allowed them to enter first into the now deadly quiet hall where dozens had gathered. The palace the mountain cradled within was a mammoth compared to the pitiful imitation Amarantha had fashioned Under the Mountain for us. With every step, the ground quaked beneath my feet as I followed my brothers, instantly spotting Feyre where she stood with her face lowered the way I had instructed her to do.

All at once, the room knelt.

“Well, well,” I said, soaking in the power I had over my despised court. “Looks like you’re all on time for once.” Boredom drawled from my voice, from the disinterested sway of my surveying eyes as bodies cowered away from my passing approach.

The eyes were what beckoned, leaned forward as chests tightened and breaths held still. Power. So much power before them and they wanted it even when their foolish minds instructed them differently. It was hard not to wonder at how many of them had longed to lick at Amarantha’s feet for fifty years while I was away. Mor had already sent me so many to... attend to.

But there would always be more.

It was Feyre who stopped my blood in its tracks. I nearly whistled at the sight. Mor had done a number on her.

She knelt in a thin sheet of black fabric, fabric rippling with sparkles and grace, that threatened to expose her most intimate parts. And for a brief second, we were back Under the Mountain and I was readying to ply her with booze to make her forget my wicked schemes. Even if here, she looked... a cheek more refined, more sleek and powerful than when I had dressed her. Guilt nipped at my heals as I stopped in front of her and gripped her chin with hard intention.

“Welcome to my home, Feyre Cursebreaker,” I bit, turning her face to me with predatory command. Her gaze was focused, cunning as she did not flinch from the cruel touch. “Come with me.”

Feyre stood, the fabric around her swaying to allow subtle peeks at little hidden expanses of her skin, and Cauldron damn me, my guilt shifted from revulsion at what I was doing to one of pure, animal instinct. This was my mate, I realized. Not just my friend, but my _ mate _ parading before me. I tightened the leash on my mask watching Feyre prowl toward me on the throne, as the fabric exposed her hips, now so much more rounded and soft than when she had first left the Spring Court. Her breasts were high and supple, threatening to burst from behind the thin slips covering them and her lips - damn Morrigan for her cunning skill - her lips were full and red and pulsing at me to bite them.

She wasn’t starved anymore. There were no longer any bones to count. Feyre was simply herself - stunning, seductive, and powerful.

A small, inviting smile, not entirely meant for my court, rose on my face as I sat on my throne and practically pulled Feyre atop me. My hands found her exposed rib cage, her inner thigh and began to run teasing circles over her skin with my thumb. Other than a small twist of discomfort at finding my fingers cold, which I immediately rectified, Feyre seemed… okay.

So I let the act begin, well aware my court was still kneeling and watching. I brought my lips in close on Feyre’s ear and half whispered, “Try not to let it go to your head.”

“What?” Feyre asked, the innocent plaything of the High Lord.

“That every male in here is contemplating what they’d be willing to give up in order to get that pretty, red mouth of yours on them.”

I tensed inside my head, waiting to see how Feyre would handle her first test, if she could stomach the ruse that so mimicked some of what I imagined were her worst nightmares from Amarantha’s vile prison sentence.

But then Feyre looked out at my court as if they were her court too. No fear. No revulsion. Just pure, cold command as she offered up a smile as slippery as the serpents crawling along the engravings of the throne where we sat.

My blood hummed. How much had I feared this day would ruin her? Maybe even bring her back to square one with all the memories it was sure to stir in her. We still had a ways to go, but my confidence grew at seeing the deadly smile Feyre aimed at the kneeling fae, all of them High born and rotten. A smile I hoped I would one day soon earn for myself.

My thumb ventured maybe half a centimeter higher on Feyre’s thigh and she leaned quite noticeably into it, and here we were, already slammed so close together.

“Rise,” I said at last, power tempering my voice, and the court obeyed. I dismissed them to their pointless charades with obvious boredom before calling Keir to the dais. Morrigan’s father looked pained as he approached. Off to the sides, my inner circle watched the man with narrowed eyes, Azriel worst of all as Keir spotted him and took in Truth-Teller at his hip, the small Illyrian dagger promising a lifetime of pain as soon as the golden woman beside him gave the command.

The day Azriel sliced the blade into that man was a day that couldn’t come fast enough. But for Mor, we would wait. Mor, who tensed to be here but now stood staring at me with her own pride and power drumming in her veins. A queen come to hold court.

“Report,” I spat, nodding my head imperceptibly to my friends who immediately dispersed. Within seconds, Azriel was no where to be seen and I could feel more than see Mor and Cassian within the throngs of people.

“Greetings, milord,” Keir said with an even voice I didn’t think him capable of mustering anymore, least not to me. “And greetings to your… guest.”

I looked at Feyre, momentarily pausing my lazy sweeps of her thigh. “She is lovely, isn’t she?”

“Indeed… There is little to report, milord. All has been quiet since your last visit.”

“No one for me to punish?”

“Unless you’d like for me to select someone here, no, milord.”

“Pity,” I said, never removing my gaze from Feyre. Nervousness entwined itself through my bones as tightly as the stars stitched atop my head as I considered her. My friend would likely think me vile, irredeemable for using her body like this the way Amarantha had used me, but I had to do it to make Keir, and what would end up reaching the farthest corners of Prythian, believe our act. They already believed her my whore, so what else would she appear visiting if not that?

And Feyre knew. I’d told her all of it and she had agreed without hesitancy, knowing it would cost us both. I’d apologized for it more times than I could count before she’d squeezed my hand and told me to stop, that it was okay.

I had to trust that as I moved in on her then, a fear I hated so intensely flickering in my mind teasing me with images of rejection and loathing to come. But I reached for Feyre with my lips anyway, lightly tugging at her earlobe with my teeth. Shivers broke out all over her body. Her stomach tightened, back arching slightly and I thought she was going to pull away, and I’d be forced to feel the bond between us pull taut with disgust.

And then her limbs went limp, her legs widening a margin around my own, and she fell back against me - no,  _ into _ me. The bond seemed to loosen, a sigh of relief between us.

Licking the inside of my mouth, I dared to begin the enticing circles of my thumb over her thigh and heard her breath hitch, felt her core pool with heat across the bond. My thumb immediately stopped.

Cauldron - was she actually  _ enjoying _ this? It felt like someone had unzipped my body and shaken my bones, laid them stark along the ground for everyone to see, I was too startled.

Feyre sighed in an almost inaudible way, urging my stroking to resume. It was an effort to remind myself to nod at Keir as he prattled on and I lost track of his one-sided conversation with me.

Feyre didn’t flinch at my touch once. Her body melded into mine as the room became glued to us despite the music and the food. My index finger joined my thumb, sliding higher with each pass along her thigh even as my other hand grazed the underside of her breasts and I realized how hard I was falling into the mixed haze of deceit and longing.

Would she hate me for this? Would she curse me? It felt like a violation what I was doing to her, the guilt gnawing more vicious than a sea beneath a wild storm when I took in the fact that she had no obligation to be here. Forcibly, I clamped the lid on my mind shut while widening the damper on my powers, begging for  _ some _ kind of release, forcing myself to run as far away from the doors of her mind lest I be tempted to enter and see the ugly truth of who I was staring back at me from her thoughts.

Because no - she wouldn’t enjoy this. These touches. These hasty, heat filled strokes.

Yet... I couldn’t stop touching. Couldn’t make my fingers find another restless land to explore to beg forgiveness. She felt simply exquisite wherever my fingertips roamed. It was both a mercy and a grievance when Keir interrupted my thumb only inches away from slipping under the fabric at Feyre’s crotch.

“I had heard the rumors, and I didn’t quite believe them,” he said. “But it seems true: Tamlin’s pet is now owned by another master.”

_ Wrong. _

_ Pet. Master. _

_ So very, very wrong. _

How far from the truth those words were. Feyre had no master even as I sat there luxuriously stroking her and she didn’t back down. But I forced Keir’s impression onto myself as I replied.

“You should see how I make her beg,” I said, running my nose along her neck, a momentary reprieve to my fingers.

“I assume you brought her to make a statement.”

“You know everything I do is a statement.”

“Of course. This one, it seems, you enjoy putting in cobwebs and crowns.”

Disgust laced his voice. Feyre and I both halted, our gazes snapping to Keir. I could have throttled him dead for that one remark alone, but Feyre was faster than I and far more cunning as she stared Keir down with wicked disapproval on her lips.

“Perhaps I’ll put a leash on  _ you _ ,” she said.

The demon working inside my mind flew back to the doors of Feyre’s mental shield as fast as he had fled only moments prior, knocking at her mind’s door with approval.

“She does enjoy playing,” I said. “Get her some wine.” Keir left and sitting alone with Feyre a mountain full of eyes staring at her in her near-nakedness pulled me back into my guilt. I pressed a light kiss below her ear hoping she would understand how irrevocably sorry I was for making her play the harlot. It was the last thing I wanted her to ever be.

And that’s when it hit me.

Sorrow filled me to the brim. I shouldn’t have let her come. I couldn’t rob her of her freedom to choose, especially not after how cruelly Tamlin had treated her in that regard, but I could have tried harder to convince her to stay. Surely there could have been  _ something _ I could have offered her, another task seemingly as important to beg her to stay behind in Velaris while still feeling useful. Anything to spare her this role.

I should have found a way to protect her just as much as free her. Sitting there with Feyre half-naked on my lap, I was no better than Amarantha. Still her lover. Still her wretched whore. I told myself I did this for the good of my court, and in part I did, but my court included the beasts now watching us. The ones I had never found a way to tame.

I didn’t deserve Feyre. I didn’t deserve Cassian, nor Azriel, nor my cousin who my eyes went out pleading for and couldn’t find in the sea.

The sea of eyes and disapproval.

That was my fate. That was what I deserved for stripping the huntress with the human heart down like this to make a mortal court owe us their allegiance.

As if sensing my change in mood, Feyre turned to look at me, her eyes searching. My grip on her thigh tightened marginally, and her lips turned down softening. Her mental shields lowered a fraction, inviting me in.

_ What? _ I dared asked into the folds of her mind, but she wouldn’t answer. Not there. Her internal touch caressed my mental shields instead. It felt soothing, light. And I couldn’t help but to lean into her. So I opened my mind to Feyre as much as my fear would allow and her voice filled me up like the melody of the music I’d once sent her, speaking a salvation I had craved for centuries.

_ You are good, Rhys, _ Feyre said.  _ You are kind. This mask does not scare me. I see you beneath it. _

The care in her words, the absence of all the fear and disgust I was sure she would hurtle at me from now on, shocked me so thoroughly that my grip on her tightened and I instantly found her cheek where I pressed a kiss of gratitude and adoration against her skin.

It was so soft. And it smelt of jasmine.

Feyre pressed in to me. Her legs widened again. And her next words undid me as she silently begged, low and sultry,  _ Why’d you stop? _

A low, feral growl almost escaped from me in an eruption that would have been loud enough to shake the snow from the mountains outside. Feyre felt the pulse of music around us and started to writhe in my lap, allowing my hands to roam and touch at my leisure, her own hands exploring my thighs. My inhibitions escaped right at that touch alongside her own as I went hard beneath her, consumed with want. She’d taken all of those doubts and rumpled them up like paper. I took deep reverent breathes at her neck, inhaling the perfume of her skin, imagining what it would be like to taste it all, to consume her with the full force of my body and mind. I wanted her more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life.

_ My mate. _

_ My mate. My mate. _

Heat radiated from Feyre’s fingertips sending warmth over my thighs as she gripped me. Her thoughts swam across the bond, barriers down and unguarded for me alone, with visions of the burning she felt in her core made manifest. I had to choke back a pleased laugh at how intensely she was reaching for me. How much I felt that fire burning me up myself.

_ Easy _ , I said to her down the bond.  _ If you become a living candle, poor Keir will throw a hissy fit. And then you’d ruin the party for everyone. _

Feyre’s hands cooled, but to my utter delight, she flung her head back and pressed herself into the crook of my neck as I shifted below her. The sensation of that pressure on my skin was ravenous, the feeling that she wanted this just as badly as I - a divine glory to my soul.

My hand slid high enough on her thigh to finally hook underneath the fabric, dangerous territory, while my other hand cast a knuckle firmly along the underside of her breast, her nipples now very peaked. She might never love me, might never accept or forgive me, but maybe if she gave me this, and her friendship.... maybe I could settle for these scraps. If they kept her from the lifetime of running instead, if they kept me near enough my mate to see and feel, but never have...

Feyre’s mind opened to me and I read nothing but the desire for  _ more, more, more _ before Keir made a startled movement.

We turned to see the stupid prick standing there, mouth wide open, a forgotten glass of wine in his hand. Feyre quickly lost interest and I wanted to laugh at him for how foolish he was. I settled for licking my way up Feyre’s neck instead watching him gape at us. Feyre’s back arched.

I stifled a chuckle. This was somehow... oddly fun. In ways I had never anticipated.

_ I think he’s so disgusted that he might have given me the orb just to get out of here _ , I said to her.

_ You and I put on a good show _ , Feyre replied in a voice I never imagined she would bestow  _ me _ with. It was heavy. Sultry. I could feel it grasping for me through the bond. My fingers curled along her thigh, tightening in approval, starving for that attention from her. Her body twisted in my lap fighting to get impossibly closer when she stilled entirely feeling how hard I’d become for her every movement.

My breathe caught. I waited for her to pull away, but suddenly she was even closer, grinding on me and returning my earlier licking with one of her own up my throat.

My head swam. Her scent was intoxicating, a rich, sweet liquor I could drown myself in drunkenness on night after night in never ending ecstasy. I wanted this. I wanted all of her. Right there on the floor in front of everyone until she would scream from the pleasure of how I felt inside her and we were mated, never mind the consequences. It was like standing on that balcony and realizing she was my mate, and all the little impulses that went along with it, yet magnified tenfold.

A laugh of feline amusement that was nearly a growl flicked out of me. I trailed kisses across her shoulder, her neck, and dug my fingers in at her thigh, dragging them up, up, up until they met with a thick, sticky slickness.

Feyre froze the second my fingers touched the wetness dripping from between her thighs. I was so blind with the desire to dip my fingers in and taste her - fuck, what did she  _ taste _ like - that I almost forgot what was even happening.

_ It’s fine, _ I said in an attempt to calm Feyre’s unease.  _ It means nothing. It’s just your body reacting. _ But my words sounded ragged in her mind, even to me. Her body was reacting the same as mine had and still was. We both wanted this. At least, I thought we had. But the contact between us just then had brought a very harsh reality to Feyre’s mind that she perhaps wasn’t ready to confront just yet.

_ Because you’re so irresistible _ ? Feyre sounded out of breathe herself. Mercifully, Azriel returned at this precise moment, sparing us the discomfort of pressing the growing tension between us further.

Keir offered me the wine and I grabbed it with the hand that had rested between Feyre’s legs. It was a pain and a relief to remove myself from the spot on her thighs. My fingers ached at losing the new home they so enjoyed, but as I grabbed the wine goblet and caught the scent of Feyre lingering on my fingertips where I could see some of her slickness shining, my blood boiled with desire all over again and I knew one very certain thing: Not my anything, something, friend, mate - I was so fucked. And maybe not in a good way.

“Should I test it for poison?” I said to Keir at the same moment I told Feyre,  _ Cassian’s waiting. Go _ . Our act was finished and I desperately needed the reprieve. Another moment on my lap with that scent catching me and I would have flipped her over and closed the gap between us entirely all the while wondering how much of the monster she saw in my eyes while I fucked her.

Feyre pranced away, the perfect image of the High Lord’s plaything. Was this how Amarantha had felt watching me leave her room in the morning? What the fuck was wrong with me that I’d done this to Feyre now too and  _ enjoyed _ a great part of it, immensely so.

Even if she had seemed to... even if Feyre had also...

The room followed her as she made her way to Cassian, including Keir. He stared at her with rank distaste as she passed at the foot of the dais, his mouth parting in a foul line as he whispered words he thought only she could hear.

“You’ll get what’s coming to you, whore,” he spat.

Darkness split the room, consuming and hungering.

For several seconds, no one could see an inch in front of their noses as my body directed the madness. The inky darkness whipped and cracked until I could feel it drag Keir to his knees.

It was fear. It was confusion. The darkness that punishes.

And punish me just as much as Keir, it did.

_ Whore _ .

I’d made Feyre my whore. All of Prythian would soon know it no matter what I did to Keir to refute it. I wasn’t just Amarantha’s whore anymore. In a way, I  _ was _ Amarantha in all her despicable manipulative ways for how I’d betrayed Feyre. It cut me to my core, replacing all that unbearable heat we’d shared together with shame.

So I did the one thing left for me to do. I saw the mask of the cruel,  _ villainous _ High Lord of the Night Court everyone wanted to see, twirling in front of me and yanked it harder to my being.

When the smoke cleared, I appeared on the throne as the perfect image of casual terror ready to reign down on Keir and break him for every bone he was worth.

“Apologize,” I said with lethal intent lacing my voice and yet, the bastard had the nerve to stay quiet. “I said, apologize.” Still he was silent, so I started at his shoulder and forced the bone to splinter four times down to the elbow. I didn’t even move a muscle to do it. My cousin stood in the far corner, my eyes having finally spotted her, looking rather pale. But her eyes sparked with a hint of venomous pleasure. Azriel stood just behind her, close enough to touch. I imagined, they were.

Still Keir said nothing except to choke on his sobs. Anger flashed through my veins, and power crashed out of me. His elbow disintegrated and only then when half of his arm was shattered did he barely manage to mouth the words  _ I’m sorry _ to Feyre between his screams. I broke the bones of his other arm for his lack of effort with a dangerous smile on my face.

This was the monster I hadn’t want Feyre to see, but Feyre looked almost as pleased as Morrigan to see Keir fall beside her.

“Should I kill him for it?” I asked to the room at large, feeling as though I’d somehow fallen with him. No one spoke. “When you wake up, you’re not to see a healer. If I hear that you do…” his pinky - gone, “If I hear that you do, I’ll carve you into pieces and bury them where no one can stand a chance of putting you together again.” Keir collapsed and I ordered him away to his rooms, hauled off by some guard or other. I relaxed in my seat, feeling pleased that however I had betrayed Feyre, I’d at least been able to provide her with some small form of amends.

Slowly, other courtiers dared themselves forward on pained feet to fill in for Keir. I sat on my throne listening for well on an hour, feeling my ears grate on the idle chatter.

_ One hour. _

I allowed myself to take in Feyre at the back of the room only periodically.

_ It’s just one hour. That’s all she’ll see. _

Now and then, she would stare back at me. No fear. No revulsion. But her face was as pale as my cousin’s. And her gaze drifted in and out over the crowds. Too like Amarantha’s crowds? Too much like the murderous whore looking back at her from my seat?

Just one hour. But Cassian had been wrong when he’d refuted that sixty minutes were enough. Every time I lost Feyre’s gaze, I knew it had been plenty.

For the remainder of that hour, only the darkness dancing and delighting at my fingertips kept me company.


	3. Chapter 43: What Is It That You Want?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Feeling guilty after the way he used Feyre in the Hewn City, Rhys pulls Feyre aside and proceeds to have a fight that leaves him wounded. Mor pushes him to be honest with Feyre about the bound and fix things in time for Starfall.

Leaving the Court of Nightmares felt like a curse.

Feyre had left me breathless on my throne, her touch and scent lingering all over me as I listened to the endless prattle of the courtiers. But when the moment came to actually leave, I choked.

One look at Feyre as we were within arm’s length of each other again and any happy illusion of her and I dreamt up on that throne was shattered, replaced by one solitary word:  _ Whore. _

“See you back-” Mor started to say, but I pushed her aside, grabbed Feyre, and winnowed without a word.

_ Whore. _

It rang and rang and rang with a bleeding in my ears. Kier’s mouth the cave through which it echoed.

The word corrupted me. I practically tossed Feyre aside as I released her arm and marched several feet away from her in the mountain clearing we’d reached, running a hand through my hair. I had thought… we were… she looked… Fuck, I didn’t know what she looked like anymore, how she felt about me. One minute her body was pressed up against mine tighter than a violin string and she’s looking at me like she wanted it too, and the next…

_ Whore _ .

I felt sick.

“I’m sorry,” I rasped suddenly. I didn’t know what else to say. How she could ever forgive me, was still standing here even -

“What do you possibly have to be sorry for?” Feyre asked.

Her question was so innocent, as if she didn’t know, and I wondered. She had seemed… accepting as she watched me that last hour, but a selfish, savage beast inside of me denied the possibility as Keir filled my mind to the tipping point with truth.

Truth. That bastard’s family gift, right? He couldn’t lie. No one who’d seen us could have. Mor would have pummeled me into the dirt if she could have heard my thoughts right now. I was glad I’d taken Feyre away alone first before facing them all.

Fuck, what would my friends say, I hadn’t even thought...

“I shouldn’t have let you go. Let you see that part of us. Of me.”

My hands shook. I wanted to fall over, to collapse as the full weight of the day struck me, my perfect facade was so eroded.

But still Feyre said, “I’m fine,” a little insistence behind her words that I wanted to believe. But then, “We knew what tonight would require of us. Please - please don’t start… protecting me. Not like that.”

I could hear the fear in her voice. See it play out in her head as we recalled the same memory. The reality of how she felt smacked me in the head. It was all an act. An outright lie. I was no better to her than Tamlin, a monster dressed up in beautiful clothes with a will to control her. The idea cracked my skull in half, and a river of sin came tumbling out.

Unhinged. Unglued. Just like in Adriata when I’d seen that necklace thrown at my feet on Feyre’s bed.

“I will never -  _ never _ lock you up, force you to stay behind. But when he threatened you tonight, when he called you…” I tightened my fists to release the pressure. Mercy, she didn’t even feel free around me yet. “It’s hard to shut down my instincts.”

The heat on Feyre’s body jumped about a million degrees. Her stance shifted, barring herself against me. “Then you should have prepared yourself better,” she seethed. “You seemed to be going along  _ just fine _ with it, until Keir said-”

“I will  _ kill _ anyone who harms you!” I shot back, cutting her off. “I will  _ kill _ them, and take a damn long time doing it. Go ahead. Hate me - despise me for it.”

“You’re my  _ friend!”  _ she said, her voice cracking on a sob.

_ Friend. My friend. _

“You’re my friend - and I understand that you’re High Lord. I understand that you will defend your true court, and punish threats against it. But I can’t… I don’t want you to stop telling me things, inviting me to do things, because of the threats against me.”

Tears spilled down her face without hesitation. It was the most honest she had ever been with me directly. But all I could think and feel and see inside my own stupid, selfish brain was Tamlin. And I lost it. The darkness exploded - the one that brings pain and sacrifice, my wings flying right along with it on that wicked wind.

“I am not him,” I said in a cold, low voice. “I will  _ never _ be him, act like him. He locked you up and let you wither, die.”

“He tried-”

“Stop comparing.  _ Stop  _ comparing me to him! You think I don’t know how stories get written - how  _ this _ story will be written?” My hands flew to my body. I could already feel the guilt racking up its debt inside of me, but I shoved it aside for the rage I harbored instead - had harbored for  _ months _ . “I am the dark lord,” I explained and Feyre shuddered. “Who stole away the bride of spring. I am a demon, and a nightmare, and I will meet a bad end. He is the golden prince - the hero who will get to keep you as his reward for not dying of stupidity and arrogance.”

“And what about my story? What about  _ my _ reward? What about what  _ I _ want?”

Feyre challenged me with a cold, unfeeling look not unlike the mask I wore most frequently, trying to prove a point, but did she even know what she was asking?

“What is it that you want, Feyre?” Her face flickered in briefest doubt as silence fell. So I asked her again, “What is it that you  _ want _ , Feyre?” Again, nothing. My fears about everything confirmed in her silence over nothing. She didn’t want me. She didn’t want any of this. I was convinced of it beyond a shadow of a doubt. She was my mate and I had known it instantly, knew I would love her until the sun bled and the clouds cried on the final days of Prythian and even then for a millennia after, and I would have told her in a heartbeat had she asked me. But to ask the same of her?

Nothing.

“Perhaps you should take some time to figure that out one of these days,” I said, my anger in complete control. Bitter until the very end. But it was Feyre’s next words that marked my death.

“Perhaps I don’t know what I want,” she said, venom hissing from her red-lipped mouth. “But at least I don’t hide what I am behind a mask. At least I let them see who I am, broken bits and all. Yes - it’s to save your people. But what about the other masks, Rhys? What about letting your friends see your real face? But maybe it’s easier not to. Because what if you did let someone in? And what if they saw  _ everything _ , and still walked away? Who could blame them - who would want to bother with that sort of mess?”

My entire body jerked. Several feet separated us. It felt like a chasm. And then… I was empty. Her words stripped me so bare, I wasn’t sure even  _ I _ had ever seen such a raw version of myself.

_ Mess _ . Suddenly infinitely worse than  _ whore _ .

At once, Feyre shifted. Her face shattered. “Rhys.” That’s all she said. Just my name. Just one little word. Barely even a syllable long. But the chasm it opened was too wide to cross.

“Let’s go home,” I said, my voice as hollow and red-rimmed as Feyre’s tear-stained eyes. When had she started crying?

I grabbed her hand before she could even try to sway me and winnowed home. All except Amren waited for us at the town house. “What the fuck did Kier say that-”  Feyre’s fingers were out of my grasp the moment we touched down, cutting Cassian off abruptly. I heard her mumble some vague excuse under her breath before she tore down the hall and disappeared, leaving everyone gaping at the aftermath of our fight written all over Feyre’s face.

As if they’d needed to see it. My own face was - a mess. The mask didn’t exist anymore. I barely even recalled what it had felt like watching Feyre disappear.

No one spoke. It felt like a thousand lifetimes spent Under the Mountain passed before I could even look up from the floor, and when I did, I found my Inner Circle gaping at me with a range of expressions. Azriel’s polite face was concerned, swimming in shadows to the point that he would drown. Cassian’s arms were crossed, his brows raised in the question his voice would dare not ask. And Mor… She was the worst.

My cousin stood with a passion in her eyes, hands braced on her hips as she pinned me down with such a piercing stare, not even Amren could have competed with it. Azriel watched her sharply, but didn’t so much as flinch to question her.

“Everyone. Get. Out.” she said, each word a solitary sculpture carved from a prison of ice.

“Mor,” Cassian said. “We need to talk about this together.”

“Get out,” Mor repeated.

“Come on, Mor-”

“I am not in the mood for your games, Cassian!” Mor’s voice rang through the apartment with finality. “You heard me.” And then her head turned to Azriel who had the decency not to look hurt as she silently dismissed him. My brothers reluctantly exited leaving me alone with my cousin’s wrath.

“What the hell is your problem, Rhysand?” Mor spat at me the second they were gone, each word clear and overly enunciated. The muscles of my back constricted against my spine with shivers.

“You don’t even know what happened.”

Mor tisked horribly. “I know  _ exactly _ what happened. Don’t insult my intelligence. You don’t think we haven’t seen you the past however many months since you came back? Watched you try to pretend you haven’t been falling apart as badly as Feyre was until you saved her? You don’t think I don’t remember how you looked at me the first day you brought to the palace?” Her eyes stung with redness. “Rhysand…” Mor rushed at me suddenly, grabbing me by the shoulders with a heartbreaking stillness. A softness overtook some of the fury and I realized she wasn’t angry at me. Not at all. She was terrified for me.

“You’ve been a shadow,” she said, her voice unhinged. “And you’re pushing the one good thing that’s been saving you away. You need to tell her.”

All at once, my doubts came rushing back. I brushed my cousin’s touch away and side stepped her until we were separated by several feet, and still it wasn’t enough. An entire ocean could have stood between us and I could never have felt capable of breathing after what Feyre had told me.

“It’s not that simple, Mor,” I said. “I can’t tell her. I can never tell her. You don’t realize what she thinks of me.”

“I know  _ exactly _ what she thinks of you and believe me when I say it’s not what  _ you _ think she thinks of you.” I scoffed, but Mor pushed on, her arms flailing a bit. “She’s so stupid in love with you, Rhysand, the entire world knows except you. She might not have admitted it to herself yet, but it’s as plain as the tattoos you share with her on your skin.”

My stomach turned, refusing to accept it. My hands shook and I couldn’t steady them, but my pockets seemed miles away. A mess. A mess not worth loving, she had called me. “It doesn’t look that way anymore.” Mor’s tone snapped back to pure venom.

“It certainly looked that way up on that frigid throne of yours today. Cauldron’s sake, Rhysand, I didn’t know who was going to fuck the other one first, you or her.”

“Don’t talk about her that way,” I barked, whirring on Mor, but she jumped right back, flying into my face, her sharp perfectly manicured hands threatening to twist up my throat. It had been an age since I’d seen her this enraged - most especially with me.

“Why not!” she demanded. “Why should it be such a bad thing that she wants you? And she does. You could have taken her then and there on that throne and she would have let you, but  _ not _ because it was part of the game.” She looked me over, her face so scrunched together, the moment became personal for her. “You don’t touch someone, feel someone,  _ live _ in someone like that unless you love them, I don’t care what’s at stake otherwise.”

Mor was close to crying. If I were capable of being more honest with myself, I would have been too. My throat swelled nearly shut at the same time my chest tightened inwards and I felt all of the words die in my throat. The conversation with Feyre at the lake replayed in my head and all that guilt I’d ignored that told me I was making a mistake, choosing to be miserable, came roaring back to life to enact its revenge.

I didn’t say anything for the longest time. Simply stared at my cousin until she finally wiped her eyes.  _ Mor... _ Now I’d hurt her too, the one person who knew... everything.

“Starfall is almost here,” she said shakily. “You should tell her soon or at least make up. It’d be a pity to waste the evening.”

I shook my head. “I’m not going to Starfall.”

“Like hell you’re not,” Mor rasped, her voice run dry. “Rhysand,” and she grabbed my face firmly, but not without care. “I wasn’t under that mountain with you for fifty years, so I won’t pretend to understand what you went through there. Only Feyre has any idea what that was like. But I’ll be damned -  _ damned _ \- if you think for one moment that I am going to spend another Starfall without my cousin - without, without…”

Her words broke off in a sob and I pulled her against me instantly as the tears broke against my chest. I hadn’t realized just how much I had missed my fearsome, beautiful Morrigan until precisely that moment. I thought I’d known all this time, what she’d meant to me, all these years, but... I’d been blind.

“I can’t,” I whispered next to the ear pressed against my shoulder. “I can’t tell her. It’s too late. She hates me. She thinks I’m just like Tamlin.”

“What?” Mor pushed back enough to look at me, a confused expression on her face. “Rhys, if you really think that, then you haven’t been paying attention at all. And we’re done here. You fix this with Feyre and you go to Starfall.” She stabbed a finger into my chest with each declaration of instruction.

“Morrigan-”

“Ah-ah! You’re going and that’s final.”

She stepped away and made for the door, stopping when she reached the handle. “You fix this with her, okay? Or I’m going to have Azriel kick your ass back to Hybern while Cassian eats popcorn on the sidelines.” A vague flicker of a smile graced her face, but I couldn’t return it. “See you at Starfall,” she said, leaving no room for argument. And then she was gone.

The next few days were a blur. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. I did solely what my court demanded I do and only that - speaking with Amren to get a letter to the queen dispatched, ensuring Cassian and Azriel had made the necessary adjustments I’d requested, and hunting down the cretins who’d attacked us to no end. And I avoided Feyre like a plague. The further the guilt seeped into me, the less courage I had to make amends. It didn’t matter what Morrigan thought or wanted. I’d seen Feyre’s face. I had heard the conviction in her voice when she told me I was worthless to love. She’d throw me out if I pushed again.

But every time the conversation replayed in my mind, it ended on that single word:  _ Rhys. _ There had been the tiniest glimmer of  _ something _ behind the way she’d said it that my heart dared to hope even while my mind was burnt out on the effort. How many times had I hoped and lost? I couldn’t go through that again.

Feyre and I had been going back and forth, circling each other so constantly. She had admitted it herself, she didn’t know what she wanted, so why waste my time trying to convince her?

The day of Starfall arrived and I still had no intention of going, my mind focused instead on the trip I’d decided we’d make to the Illyrian Steppes the following day to wait out the queens in better safety now that magic was tracked.

I awoke to find my suit hanging on the door for me, no doubt Morrigan’s way to taunt me into going. I vaguely wondered if she’d stayed overnight rather than at the House with the boys. But Feyre had made no move to see me since last we’d argued, all but confirming my decision to stay behind. So when a faint tug of magic flickered by me once in the morning and once at mid-day, I ignored them both. But the third time it happened, I felt an awful anxiety cross the bond and my masochistic curiosity got the better of me. I released the magic. A paper appeared beside me with Feyre’s neatly printed script.

_ Is this punishment? Or do people in your Inner Circle not get second chances if they piss you off? You’re a hateful coward. _

Coward. Hateful. Pissed off. Whore.

But not  _ mess _ .

I ignored all of it and honed in on one word: punishment. Feyre felt my silence was a punishment, and if she thought it was a punishment to be withheld from me…

Three times. She’d tried to contact me three times and I’d ignored her. I’d ignored her waiting for me in the garden after the Court of Nightmares too.

_ You don’t touch someone, feel someone, live in someone like that unless you love them, I don’t care what’s at stake otherwise. _

All those times Mor had waited for Azriel. Had watched him over the dinner table when the conversation turned sour. Had her hand on his knee when I’d interrupted her receiving him at the House. Had stayed with him and waited for him and danced and delighted in him when he couldn’t for himself.

All those years. I’d barely given it  _ one _ with Feyre.

Before the sun could finish setting, I jumped up and ran for the door, snatching the suit from the hanger, and threw all my hope into it as I prepared for Starfall.


	4. Chapter 44: Smile Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Starfall :)

It took me precisely half an hour to stop actively trying to convince myself she hated me and open the door. As I stepped out onto the terrace and took in Velaris from the upper balconies of the House, I knew I’d made the right call by coming.

The city glowed under the soft lanterns that had been dimmed to accommodate the coming attractions. Music hummed celestial in every corner and smiles met me at every turn. My chest expanded inhaling it all in.

Home. This was home.

It was every bit as spectacular as I’d remembered, and every bit as painful as I’d expected it would be while I waited Under the Mountain. But it was worth it. Fifty years of hiding came flooding back into my mind and it was an effort not to buckle as the realization of what I’d survived - what I’d  _ earned _ \- fell upon my shoulders watching citizens move out clinking glasses, sharing stories, laughter. There wasn’t a cloud in sight.

This was Starfall and it would be magnificent.

The city that housed every single one of my dreams gleamed at me with life and love and hope as I walked into the throngs of people, things I had almost lost. We all had. But looking around, I could feel the pieces of myself that I’d lost dancing around me, begging me to reach out and grab them. I just couldn’t quite... reach yet. Something was missing. Too much pain blocked the way, told me it was all a lie and that I wouldn’t be allowed any of it.

If Morrigan had heard my thoughts, she would have said I was sabotaging myself again and made good on her word to have Azriel kick my ass back to Hybern. I spotted the Shadowsinger in question across the way, along with Cassian sharing a laugh with a mutual friend, and simply stared, unable to move forward and accept that any of it was real. It was so normal. My friends...

I swallowed. And then I saw  _ her _ .

A narrow lane parted in the sea of people around me, leading only to Feyre. Her hair, pulled back by two crystal pins, dripped down behind her in a golden caress of her back that moved softly on the breeze. Diamonds and tiny crystalline jewels of faintest blue, a softer shade of my mother’s sapphire ring, adorned the dress that clung to her every curve.

_ Curves _ .

She had them now and in abundance. This wasn’t the full bodied seductress I’d taken to court. Feyre looked happy and healthy, and when she turned her head enough for me to see her profile, my stomach dropped out completely at the sight of her, a fallen star ready and waiting for someone to catch her and break her fall. That now familiar rhythm of my soul conducted a melody in time to my heartbeat, one word for each beat that I never wanted to stop hearing.

Feyre wasn’t my friend. Could never be my friend no matter what little pieces of her heart she was willing to let me protect. I might be nothing more than a ghost or a friend in her life, but I knew looking at her there was only one option my heart could make room for if Feyre was to stay, only one way I could picture her.

_ My-Mate. _

_ My-Mate. _

_ My-Mate. _

My heart sped up at each beat of the words.

“If you don’t shut your mouth, you’ll get drool all over the ground and while I know you’ve been gone a long while, we don’t allow behavior like that at Starfall anymore,” Cassian hissed in my ear.

Startled though I was at the sound of his voice pulling me from what had apparently become an outright stare at Feyre, I managed to contain myself to a mere twitch of my head. Cassian barked out an amused laugh knowing exactly where my weaknesses were.

“Go already, you stupid prick,” Cassian said. His hands found my back and shoved until I stumbled forward. I couldn’t even manage a retort, my eyes had not moved off of Feyre.

Each step was a well of anxiety around my feet, but when I reached the threshold where Feyre and Mor stood chatting, every ounce of hesitation slipped away as I was momentarily trapped by the sight of her. From far away, Feyre was a fallen star glimmering on the edge of a cliff. But close up, she was as all consuming as the wildest galaxy.

“I’ve had lovers,” Mor was saying, “but… I get bored. And Cassian has had them, too, so don’t get that unrequited-love, moony-woo-woo look. He just wants what he can’t have, and it’s irritated him for centuries that I walked away and never looked back.”

I stepped forward, a tad surprised at the topic of conversation, and spoke before I had too much time to lose my nerve and turn around. “Oh, it drives him insane,” I said. Feyre jumped about a mile high out of her skin. I caught a wicked knowing grin from Mor before I moved, circling Feyre and drinking in the sight of her openly. I couldn’t help myself when my eyes had finished the length of her and I smirked. “You look like a woman again.”

“You really know how to compliment females, cousin,” Mor said. And just like that, she left, but not before resting her hand on my shoulder with a firmness in her touch that told me she was glad I’d changed my mind about coming.

And then, just like that, I was alone with her. With Feyre. My Feyre. And all I could do was stare.

But... she was staring too - a good thing, I wondered. Or at least, she tried not to, but I could see her eyes trailing all over me, taking me in from the loose black jacket around my shoulders to the exposed skin at my neck where my tattoos swirled. Already I’d become a mess inside, unglued at the mere sight of her.

It was Feyre who finally pulled us out of the silence.

“Do you plan to ignore me some more?” Her voice was silk - cool, and on guard.

“I’m here now, aren’t I?” I said. “I wouldn’t want you to call me a hateful coward again.” Even with her shields up, I could feel her slip away the instant the words left me. Heat ravaged her skin and as I watched her head turn in search of some other comfort, I slipped back into my old fearful self, desperate not to lose her again. “I wasn’t punishing you,” I said in a rush. “I just… I needed time.”

Feyre tensed, her body taking a deep inhale as she shifted away from me, but at least she didn’t leave.

“Will you please tell me what this… gathering is about?”

The wind danced over her hair, her skin sparkling. Mother above, she was so beautiful. And she had no idea. About herself. About Starfall. Me or them or us or any of it. And I loved her for it, that gorgeous curiosity about the world she knew so little of that made her mind so sharp and inviting. The first thing she’d brought with her and offered me in that palace of the north.

I stepped up behind her, daring myself closer and murmured in her ear with an amused snort, “Look up.”

“No speech for your guests?” she asked, turning her attention to the skies at the same moment the entire city stilled.

“Tonight’s not about me, though my presence is appreciated and noted.” I paused, pointing high above us to the Heavens just as the first star fell. “Tonight’s about that.”

Feyre followed my gesture, and gasped as souls began weaving across the star-strewn sky, thin at first and then more steadily thick, like heavy streaks of paint blurred together beneath a brush. Lights collided in heavy drops of color so rare and unseen in any other part of the world. Blues, and impossibly stark whites took over until the sky was a canvas of sparkling divinity.

I felt Feyre lean against me and quickly pull herself back forward. That momentary lapse between us was enough to set off my craving for her all over again, a reminder that I had missed this very moment, not just with her but the entire city, for the last fifty years.

So I stepped away to give her space to take it all in, but the view that met me only twisted the knife in my gut further: Morrigan. Azriel. Cassian. All of them dancing, twisting around and into one another like the souls above us with vibrant smiles plastered across their faces. They were a wild and living thing, my trio of closest friends and allies, just happy to be alive and in each other’s company.

I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to be just so. The idea that I could have all of that spirit and will again tasted so foreign on my mind’s tongue. And tomorrow it could all be gone again, just like that. The possibility weighed me down considerably.

Feyre noticed. She came to stand next to me with a heavy gaze in her eyes. I swallowed and offered her my hand, needing to be away from here where it was just her, the only one who’d understand the twisting of my thoughts. Who I hoped would still listen.

“Come,” I said, glad when Feyre took my hand. “There’s a better view. Quieter.”

I led her to a balcony high up on the House of Wind where the entire city was lain out before us in a sweeping view and the sky shone at its brightest to see. Feyre seated herself on the balcony, but one look over the edge sent her reeling back off of it by several feet, her face drawn pale.

“If you fell, you know I’d bother to save you before you hit the ground,” I said with a quiet laugh.

“But not until I was close to death?” she asked.

“Maybe.”

“As punishment for what I said to you?”

She said it so quietly. My throat went instantly dry. “I said some horrible things, too,” I admitted. The absolute truth. But Feyre sputtered out a hasty rebuttal that surprised me.

“I didn’t mean it. I meant it more about myself than you. And I’m sorry.”

“You were right, though. I stayed away because you were right,” and indeed, I had. “Though I’m glad to hear my absence felt like a punishment.”

Feyre snorted, my heart melting at that tiny insignificant sound, and a manageable calm settled between us that felt almost normal again.

“Any news with the orb or the queens?”

“Nothing yet. We’re waiting for them to deign to reply.”

We stilled then simply taking it all in and it dawned at me that the door was open. I could tell her tonight. Mor twirled stories below us, but her words from two days previous rang through my ears loud and clear:  _ You need to tell her. Fix this… _

Be honest.

“They’re not - they’re not stars at all,” Feyre said, cutting my dangerous thoughts off. I came to meet her at the railing of the balcony where she studied her heavens, but I couldn’t be bothered to join her. My first Starfall in fifty years and all I wanted to watch was her.

“No. Our ancestors thought they were, but… they’re just spirits, on a yearly migration to somewhere. Why they pick this day to appear here, no one knows.”

Feyre passed a quick glance over me that made my heart shudder. Her every look was fatal tonight, like my life depended upon them. “There must be hundreds of them,” she said softly, a kind of sadness creeping over her.

“Thousands,” I corrected. “They’ll keep coming until dawn. Or, I hope they will. There were less and less of them the last time I witnessed Starfall.”

A weight snapped back in place over my soul. So... back and forth tonight. So inconsistent, my heart felt.

But fifty years. _ Fifty years _ . It was a mere blip in the context of my entire life, but it was enough to let me know I’d missed out on something important, something essential to the fiber of my being. This was my court, my home, and the fact that I didn’t recognize even a small, infinitesimal piece of it like the number of souls traversing the skies at Starfall, made me feel as though my own soul were dying.

Like I had failed as their High Lord.

“What’s happening to them?” Feyre asked. I felt her look at me, searching for something more than the explanation of Starfall, but I suddenly couldn’t bear to return her gaze anymore as I folded beneath the force of what I’d done. So I just shrugged.

“I wish I knew. But they keep coming back despite it.”

“Why?”

Such a simple question with such a complicated answer, but I gave her the only one I had. The one that had come to define me since the moment I drank the wine and felt my powers fade away in that wretched throne room.

“Why does anything cling to something?” I asked. “Maybe they love wherever they’re going so much that it’s worth it. Maybe they’ll keep coming back, until there’s only one star left. Maybe that one star will make the trip forever, out of the hope that someday - if it keeps coming back often enough - another star will find it again.”

And I would. I would go back a thousand times over to save this city even if I were the only one left to inhabit its gentle streets. If time froze and my powers were stripped away and my wings were torn, I would have fought Amarantha over and over again just for a chance at returning here and finding Feyre, my radiant, hopeful star.

“That’s… a very sad thought,” Feyre said quietly.

“Indeed,” I said, collapsing inwardly on myself. I rested my forearms against the railing of the balcony as she studied me, trying not to let my grief show through, but I couldn’t do it anymore. I was tired of being miserable and alone, hiding myself from anyone and everyone.

This was Starfall. It should be special even if it was painful and honest. And if anyone deserved to know the truth, it was Feyre.

“Every year that I was Under the Mountain,” I began, trying not to let my voice waver even as I needed desperately to get the words out so someone could understand, “and Starfall came around, Amarantha made sure that I… serviced her. The entire night. ” Feyre went very still beside me. “Starfall is no secret, even to outsiders - even the Court of Nightmares crawls out of the Hewn City to look up at the sky. So she knew… She knew what it meant to me.”

Music disappeared. The sky went dark. The earth fell away at my feet and all Feyre said was a simple, “I’m sorry.” But it wasn’t full of pity. No, it was full of understanding. A promise that what I was telling her was okay. It gave me the courage to press on.

“I got through it by reminding myself that my friends were safe; that Velaris was safe” I explained further, feeling little bits of the night come back to me as the weights of revealing the truth were lifted. “Nothing else mattered, so long as I had that. She could use my body however she wanted. I didn’t care.”

“So why aren’t you down there with them?” Feyre’s head motioned out of the corner of my eye to below - to where my family was  _ living _ .

I shook my head at the reminder of those temptations of what tonight could be for me if I was only brave enough to reach out and snatch it. Brave like Feyre.

“They don’t know - what she did to me on Starfall. I don’t want it to ruin their night.”

“I don’t think it would,” Feyre said and I could tell she believed it. Wanted me to as well. “They’d be happy if you let them shoulder the burden.”

“The same way you rely on others to help with your own troubles?”

I looked at her to find her staring right back at me. I hadn’t realized how close our faces were. A light prickle graced my fingers and I was surprised into utter delight to find her hands reaching for me, carving out a home for themselves in my palm. My hands stilled as she drew a finger over them, a caress that said,  _ It’s alright. I’m here and I know you _ , just as she’d told me in the Court of Nightmares.

_ We can rely on each other. _

And I realized then how empty I had been. How starved I was for that touch. Not just during these past weeks and months or even years with Amarantha. Centuries had gone by spent wonderfully with my friends, I didn’t discount those years with them for even a second.

But even as we had grown up together, fought together, danced and laughed and lived together, there had always been something missing. My family was taken from me, my cousin treated worse than cattle, and my friends counted as mere swords on the battlefield and nothing more. We were all broken and abused and healing, and then Amarantha came and stole what little faith had been left in my heart away.

And now here was Feyre giving it all back to me and more, promising me the world in that touch on my hand. It stole the breath right out of me to feel her reach for me, like my lungs might collapse or my knees might give out.

I wanted to kiss her. To tell her everything and anything she wanted to hear, whatever she would let me say. I was hers. She could have all of me if she would take me on, let me reach back.

A burst of light and Feyre cried out in shock, staggering back from me with a look of pure horror coming over her. A falling star-soul had collided with her face, the freckles of her nose and cheeks illuminated in a beautiful cascade of color. Feyre stood stunned and looking at me as if the universe had cursed her.

So unaware. So taken aback. So  _ free _ .

I laughed. I laughed so hard, my soul might have burst. My body unraveled at the seams even as it was simultaneously filled to the brim with a joy I had not felt in years, maybe ever. If I had, it could never have compared to the way that joy felt now in precisely this moment watching the sky paint my mate with the purest form of life my court could offer.

“I could have been blinded!” Feyre shouted, charging at me and shoving me roughly. I laughed again without restraint at her outrage and Feyre’s features softened, betraying her angry bluff. It only made my heart sing more wildly for her. She tried to wipe the dust away, but I grabbed her hands in a frenzy with a bright smile on my face.

“Don’t,” I said staring down at her beautiful, star-strewn face. “It looks like your freckles are glowing.” Even amidst the smear of color, I could still see the red glowing beneath it on her cheeks. Such a brilliant star you are, I thought.

She made another swipe at me, but not without a wicked mischievous look in her eyes. She was - she was  _ playing _ with me. And it felt  _ fun _ . I jumped out of the way right as my own sky-bound traveler smacked into my face, like the stars above were trying to drive us together, to match.

“Shit!” I spat, gaping at my hands as I clawed away at the dust from my face. Feyre’s laugh burst out of her with rapture. She strode immediately for me, as though she didn’t realize what she was doing, and took my hand. I froze, my breathe hinging on her touch while her fingers traced the pattern of a star on my palm.

A smile overtook my face, my grip tightening around her hand as she finished painting me.  _ Painting _ . Feyre was painting again for the first time. And it meant... it meant that I wasn’t Tamlin. I wasn’t the monster in the shadows. Not to her, at least. Not to my mate. I was simply Rhys, stripped of everything except the simple fact that my entire heart sat there between us in the palm of my hand as she molded and gave it life with the brushes of her fingertips.

And when she looked up at me not even aware of what she’d done, she took one look at my dust covered face, her fingers still laced tightly with mine, and  _ smiled _ .

My soul sighed.

Feyre was smiling. I’d never seen anything more - never dreamed she’d look so -

All at once, the music that had disappeared, the lights that had dimmed from the sky in the darkness of my thoughts - all of it came rushing back. Noise and lights and music and laughter surrounded me, creating a joyous symphony all because of that smile. I had waited what felt like an eternity for this moment. Every single second under that mountain had been worth it... just to see Feyre smile.

Feyre’s lips twitched, returning to her normal composure as her eyes asked me what was going on inside my head.

“Smile again,” I requested humbly, hardly able to get the words out. Feyre looked down at our entwined hands taking in the magic her fingers had drawn out on my palm. She seemed to realize what had passed between us just then, but she didn’t shy away from it. Quite the opposite, actually. And when she looked back up at me, her smile was so bright and beaming - for me,  _ all of it for me, it was mine _ \- I could have cried. “You’re exquisite,” I breathed.

“You owe me two thoughts,” she said through that radiance. “Back from when I first came here. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

I huffed out a laugh, my breath tickling her cheeks, and rubbed my neck with my remaining free hand. “You want to know why I didn’t speak or see you?” I asked, the words springing immediately to my lips. Somehow the truth didn’t feel so awkward anymore. “Because I was so convinced you’d throw me out on my ass. I just…. I figured hiding was a better alternative.”

“Who would have thought the High Lord of the Night Court could be afraid of an illiterate human?” Her voice purred at me, begging me to come play. Another of the night’s many temptations. “That’s one. Tell me another thought.”

I gave her the only other thing on my mind as my eyes danced wickedly to her lips. “I’m wishing I could take back that kiss Under the Mountain.”

Feyre’s brow furrowed in surprise. “Why?”

“Because I didn’t make it pleasant for you, and I was jealous and pissed off, and I knew you hated me.”

_ And because I wish I could relive that kiss properly, right here, right now in the way that you deserve. _

An intense electricity buzzed between us. Our eyes flitted from our still grasped hands to our shared gaze and back, never sparing a thought for the non-existent space between us. We had one solitary touch connecting us at our fingertips and somehow it felt miles deeper and more intimate than what had passed at the Court of Nightmares, than anything I’d felt down the bond itself from her.

When I looked up at Feyre for the final time, I let the desire for her - mind, body, and soul - flow freely across my face. The finger that ran along my wrist in response sent adrenaline through my system, rooting me to the spot.

“Do you,” she started say, nearly tripping over the words. “Do you want to dance with me?” Her voice was so soft, barely a whisper. It wasn’t until she looked back up at me that I realized I’d forgotten to answer.

“You want to dance?” I asked in a rasping voice; she’d taken even that away from me.

Her smile brightened, teasing - knowing. “Down there - with them,” Feyre replied, pointing to where Mor and my brothers were gathered. All of the many temptations the night had to offer coalesced in front of me and with my hand curling ever more tightly around Feyre’s, I was finally ready to chase at them. If Feyre could heal, enough to want to paint again and smile for me, then I could do it too.

“Of course I’ll dance with you,” I said. “All night, if you wish.”

“Even if I step on your toes?”

“Even then.”

Feyre gave a little smile I couldn’t resist. It was as though now that she had started, she could no longer stop, it felt too joyous to deny her lips the pleasure. Closing the small gap left between us, I leaned down and brushed my lips against her cheek. A small gift for the both of us. “I am… very glad I met you, Feyre,” I said when I pulled back. Her eyes were rimmed with redness, but she did not look unhappy. Far from it, in fact.

“Come on,” she said with a tug of my hands. “Let’s go join the dance.”

And dance we did. All of us together as a family, just the way it should have always been and should always be. Feyre freed me well and truly that night. My entire soul sang at her every touch, turned over on itself with every look. And despite how much I enjoyed spending the evening with all of my friends - sharing drinks and jabs with my brothers and jubilant dances so full of merriment with my infectious cousin - it was Feyre I kept coming back to indulge in, dance after dance after dance.

I let our movements do all the talking. Each sweep of her out of and into my arms begged her to wake up, told her how much I cherished her, how much I never thought I would look up out of that pit below where I’d found myself and see her staring back at me ready to pull me up. The power she held over my being threatened to burn right through me.

And when the music had swelled its finest and Feyre’s smile glowed enough to encompass the city and make them forget the souls above, the darkness reached out of me and swept Feyre up into the air until we danced on clouds of smoke and our own inky pool of starlight.

The darkness of lovers. The darkness that binds.

She laughed at the rush, smoke curling around the folds of her dress where it swayed around her ankles and floated us off the ground in time to the music. I pulled her wrist until she swam back into me, her own darkness leaking out to mate with mine.

My world felt complete.

Feyre watched the shadows glow and the darkness surround her as she twirled in the starlight. A laugh - the first of many that evening - burst across her face. My own would soon follow.


	5. Chapter 45: I Want to Paint You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Starfall, Rhys takes off for the Illyrian Steppes with Feyre, Cassian, and Mor. While out training, Feyre learns the truth about Rhys and Tamlin's fraught friendship.

No longer if, but when.

When I would tell Feyre, I decided. It’s what had kept me up long after I’d flown Feyre back to our townhouse, kissed her brow at her door, and bid her goodnight. Sleep-addled, star flecked expressions had flanked both our faces until finally I had torn myself from her side, and spent the next hour wondering if I dared go back to discover what peeling her out of that gown would feel like or sleeping skin to skin.

We had danced all evening, until the streets were empty and the sun was cresting over the horizon, playing along the gentle ripples of the Sidra. Feyre barely moved to the last beats of music as we slowed in our dance. I scooped her up in my arms, enjoying her warmth as she cradled into me, her head resting in that open collar of my shirt against my skin, and shot into the sky. Below us, Azriel peeled a sleeping Mor from the settee off the dining room to tuck her away inside for the morning. Cassian had already disappeared.

And now we were airborne once more, shooting through the brightest day of spring I’d seen yet in Velaris, toward the House of Wind for a quick lunch before making for the Illyrian camps. Azriel and Amren would stay behind, while Mor went with the rest of us before taking off for the Hewn City herself to check on Keir. I had tried to convince her, in those days she chided me for pushing off Feyre, that he wasn’t worth her notice, but she’d nagged back that I was being a tart for ignoring Feyre, so she’d ignore me too until I’d wizened up.

But Mor wasn’t at the lunch table for me to attempt to persuade anew when Feyre and I breezed inside. Amren too was missing, though I could see the dark red stains in a tea glass at the end of the table that told me she was hissing about somewhere.

“Where’s Mor?” Feyre yawned, stretching out of my arms like a cat. She wore her flying leathers, which made her appear much more awake than any of us currently felt.

Cassian opened his mouth to answer, but it was Azriel, his eyes softly closed over the tea perched at his lips, who said dreamily, “She’s still asleep.” Cassian’s head twitch, a movement he would never have made had his brother been awake to bear it witness despite the shadows - shadows that seemed nonexistent this morning.

I wondered just how long my brother had stayed with Mor after carrying her from that settee only a few hours ago.

Feyre’s eyes slid to mine, the first real look she’d given me since we’d awkwardly stumbled into each other to fly here. It seemed neither of us were going to address the evening, that air of  _ what if _ , quite just yet. She lifted a single brow and I scowled. It only made her chuckle silently.

“I’ll go get her,” she said.

Cassian snorted, but sitting there in his worn out leathers, it sounded flat - even for him. “Good luck,” he said and Feyre traipsed toward the hall. “If you want deal with the princess on less than appropriate sleep, be my guest.”

Feyre came to a grinding halt at the hallway threshold and wagged a finger at the commander of the Illyrian armies. “Ah-ah, Mor is not a princess.” Cassian lifted a single brow. “She is a  _ queen _ ,” Feyre finished and disappeared, though not before returning Cassian’s scowl with a gesture that would have made the queen herself proud.

“Cauldron,” Cassian groaned, his head lolling back on the chair and turning toward me. “Now there’s  _ two _ of them. This is all  _ your _ fault.” Azriel bit back a smile as he finally opened his eyes to peer at the pair of us, and cut it short when he saw Cassian wasn’t quite laughing.

I sat down next, Azriel across from me and Cass at my side, and focused on buttering my toast with honeyed jams and berries rather than contemplate the leathers we all wore, the places we were all about to go - separately.

Last night we had all been inseparable. Now, we might never be whole again. The Illyrians... The Queens... Keir. The magic of Starfall was already a distant memory with the promise of brutality in differing forms lingering closeby.

My eyes kept darting back faithfully to that threshold where Feyre had been. Waiting. Watching. Wanting. Wondering when she’d be back. How long we’d keep dancing. It felt like we had never stopped dancing.

Amren walked in with a fresh cup, filled to the brim, and inspected us sharply, though I was the only one who bothered to acknowledge she’d come back. She didn’t say anything until Mor came back with Feyre and saw what had been a hesitant smile drop on her face now that she was faced with a last meal. Only Amren and Azriel spoke for the remainder of lunch.

One day... or fifty. This was not going to be a pleasant trip.

* * *

Mor made quick work of her food, meager for what she normally consumed with such fervor, and her goodbyes. She winnowed all four of us into the north and suddenly, my lungs were filled with a cold numbness, full from scents of pine and blood and sweat.

Feyre’s gaze swept out in a hard line from left to right, reading the mud, the shanties, the cliffs atop which shirtless Illyrian novices trained to a bone breaking degree. It had only been recently that arriving in these camps did not issue a shudder down my spine. I used to live and breathe (and sometimes not breathe) in those hell pits, fighting for scraps of respect and dominance. Cass and Azriel too.

Within seconds of landing, Lord Devlon spotted us and his back straightened impossibly higher, a sneer already landed on his face. “I hate this place,” Mor said at the sight of him stepping forward, the blood caked about his clothes as if it could hide the veneer of arrogance. “It should be burned to the ground.”

A fair conclusion, even on a good day.

Neither Cassian nor I moved. I made Devlon come to me - him and the  _ five _ other brutes attending him. A thrumming twitched at my fingertips - power asking me to do something. He hadn’t even spoken.

Devlon paused and eyed me up and down. “Another camp inspection?” Now he gave Cass a go. “Your dog was here just the other week. The girls are training.”

“I don’t see them in the ring,” Cassian said, folding his arms over his chest. His siphons caught the light, a subtle reminder that the High Lord’s dog would always outrank him.

“They do chores first, then when they’ve finished, they get to train.”

A morning’s worth of tension snapped inside my cousin, a snarl ripping out of her mouth low and sweet. Devlon turned his head to her, not expecting her presence, and had the decency to go still. “Hello, Lord Devlon,” Mor said, a lover and a sinner’s prayer all at once. The smile she flashed him was beyond atonement.

And just as Nesta had once ignored Cassian upon dinner, Devlon barely acknowledged Morrigan’s hello before fixing his waiting, agitated gaze on myself.

“Pleasant as it always is to see you, Devlon,” I said, nothing pleasant at all about the way I let the power relieve itself in my tone, “there are two matters at hand.” His mouth tightened. Sometimes I still thought about challenging  _ him _ to a go in the ring. “First,” I continued, “the girls, as you were clearly told by Cassian, are to train  _ before _ chores, not after. Get them out on the pitch. Now. Second, we’ll be staying here for the time being. Clear out my mother’s old house. No need for a housekeeper. We’ll look after ourselves.”

“The house is occupied by my top warriors.”

“Then un-occupy it. And have them clean it before they do.”

I couldn’t let my powers roll out of me. High Lord magic tricks would mean little here. Would probably do more damage than good, in fact. So it was all down to dead end stare I gave him, the promise of death and disease lingering about my voice, to get Devlon to do my bidding as he knew he’d eventually be forced to anyway.

And indeed, he released my stare.... only to land on Feyre. His nostrils flared, sniffing. Once. Twice. It was a beautiful thing to hear that foul blackened heart of his beat so rapidly away in its cage when he first stared at my mate.

“Another like that... creature you bring here?” He actually sounded tentative. “I thought she was the only one of her ilk.”

“Amren,” I said cooly, “sends her regards.” And would have a field day when I told her how her favorite chew toy spoke of her.

I motioned to Feyre, who didn’t back away from Devlon’s critical eye. My mate and an Illyrian lord... A smile danced brutally inside my chest. “She’s  _ mine _ ,” I said, the words easing off my tongue as if I’d said them out loud a thousand times before, never only in my head. Said them the way I’d wanted to when Tarquin had stared at her over meals and plied her with honey in his treasure troves. “And if any of you lay a hand on her, you lose that hand. And then you lose your head. And once Feyre is done killing you, then I’ll grind your bones to dust.”

The smile in my chest pranced out in a vicious smirk that made Devlon and his lackeys assessed Feyre. Power hummed in my veins, the same power I’d let loose stealing the book from Tarquin, attacking and taking down his sentries one by one. A new kind of freedom, one I could only truly indulge here.

It felt  _ good _ . With my mate by my side to see it.

I think all of us felt it. Mor was eying Devlon behind me as he stepped away and I was surprised not to see a tail wagging excitedly behind her. Cassian similarly could feel his powers running wild - the killing power, alive and well. It was one thing to come here alone, another to visit with friends - allies.

“We’re heading out,” I announced, stepping toward the tree line and cutting Mor a look. “We’ll be back at nightfall. Try to stay out of trouble, please. Devlon hates us the least of the war-lords and I don’t feel like finding another camp.”

“I’ll try,” she said with a wink, and even though I shook it off, I was pleased to see some fire back in her eyes. Perhaps the afternoon would provide enough distraction she would not dwell so much on Keir. Perhaps, she would even change her mind about going altogether and stay.

I turned to Cass. “Check on the forces, then make sure those girls are practicing like they should be. If Devlon or the others object, do what you have to.” His grin was all the compliance I needed.

“Let’s go,” I said to Feyre, stalking toward the trees and halting when she didn’t immediately follow, but swung around to face me instead.

“You hear from my sisters?”

“No. Azriel is checking today if they received a response. You and I...” I paused, and positively ate Feyre alive with the filthy smirk plastered on my face. “We’re going to train.”

_ And see just how beautiful that killing power of yours Devlon fears truly is. _

Her face sparked with the promise of flame and ice and maybe something more. Excitement. “Where?”

I swept one arm out wide, the trees and greenery and mountains just beyond where my fingertips led, and offered my other arm to Feyre. I was quite pleased when she took it and crawled into my embrace. “Away from potential casualties,” I said.

And then, we flew. And for a moment, it was just as nice as Starfall.

* * *

That wonderful spike in confidence ebbed into a pensive, contented flight with Feyre tucked warm against my chest. She didn’t seem to have a problem being nestled there. And she was also the braver of us to break the silence first. We were as close as we had been as the sun had crested over Starfall.

“You’re training Illyrian warriors?” she asked. Even the wind didn’t fight her words reaching me today.

“Trying to,” I said. My wings beat us higher into the air, over the canopy of trees. I stared at the tops as though I might see the Illyrian women themselves fighting or hiding beneath. As though I could see my mother. “I banned wing clipping a long, long time ago, but... at the more zealous camps, deep within the mountains, they do it. And when Amarantha took over, even the milder camps started doing it again. To keep their women safe, they claimed. For the past hundred years, Cassian has been trying to build an aerial fighting unit amongst the females, trying to prove that they have a place on the battlefield. So far, he’s managed to train a few dedicated warriors, but the males make life so miserable that many of them left. And for the girls in training...” I hissed, the memories of those initial trials crystal clear in my mind, the lengths to which Cassian and I - and those girls especially - had gone, through word and bone, to make it happen. “It’s a long road. But Devlon is one of the few who even lets the girls train without a tantrum.”

A slice of heat whipped down my neck from where Feyre’s skin connected - angry. “I’d hardly call disobeying orders ‘without a tantrum.’“

“Some camps issued decress that if a female was caught training, she was to be deemed unmarriageable. I can’t fight against things like that, not without slaughtering the leaders of each camp and personally raising each and every one of their offspring.”

“And yet your mother loved them - and you three wear their tattoos.” Not a judgment call, but close enough to it that I tensed.

“I got the tattoos in part for my mother, in part to honor my brothers, who fought every day of their lives for the right to wear them.”

“Why do you let Devlon speak to Cassian like that?” Another kiss of angry heat. Another almost judgment. My eyes began searching for the nearest clearing to make a home in for the afternoon.

“Because I know when to pick my fights with Devlon, and I know Cassian would be pissed if I stepped in to crush Devlon’s mind like a grape when he could handle it himself.”

Feyre’s hand turned from heat to ice for a brief space of time before her tongue set to work on my mind once more, this time more calculating and considering than the last. “Have you thought about doing it?”

“I did just now,” I admitted, and could still feel the remnants of power that had twitched to break free at my fingertips when Devlon had approached us. “But most camp-lords never would have given the three of us a shot at the Blood Rite. Devlon let a half-breed and two bastards take it - and did not deny us our victory.”

“What’s the Blood Rite?”

Finally, I looked at her, and was amazed how little exasperation was on her face for the drill she put me through. That curiosity hard at work, as always. “So many questions today.” Her hand gripping my neck slid down to my shoulder and pinched - hard. A new kind of fire. I chuckled even as it stung slightly. Feyre ghosted a pleased look in return, her head reclining back on my chest.

“You go unarmed into the mountains,” I explained, “magic banned, no Siphons, wings bound, with no supplies or clothes beyond what you have on you. You, and every other Illyrian male who wants to move from novice to true warrior. A few hundred head into the mountains at the start of the week - not all come out at the end.”

Slowly, that head on my chest tilted up - just slightly. “Do you - kill each other?”

“Most try to.” Only the wind kept my voice from creeping down low. “For food and clothes, for vengeance, for glory between feuding clans. Devlon allowed us to take the Rite - but also made sure Cassian, Azriel, and I were dumped in different locations.”

“What happened?”

“We found each other. Killed out way across the mountains to get to each other. Turns out, a good number of Illyrian males wanted to prove they were stronger, smarter than us.” As though in phantom memory, a number of small scars on my body sliced with a flash of knowing - blood and pain and death. But also Cassian coming over that hilltop like a god cut from the skins of heaven enact justice. And Azriel too, shadows carrying him through the trees and wiping the blood that caked his scarred hands and mouth. But mostly, the the twinkle in each of our eyes as we recognized one another and continued the blood shed all the way back to camp and received our markings. Warmth replaced the slicing pain along those scars. “Turns out they were wrong,” I finished.

Feyre looked up at me. But I shifted us downward into the clearing I’d spotted first. Snow crunched softly beneath our boots as we inhaled the fresh pine and sap of the trees. Winter would always be thick in the Steppes.

Feyre stepped out my arms, ruffling herself a bit as she went, and surveyed the clearing. “So, you’re not using magic - but I am?”

“Our enemy is keyed in on my powers. You, however, remain invisible.” She turned to look at me. And there was something stiff - something hesitating in those eyes of hers. Something that didn’t quite match the high of flying with her that I felt. “Let’s see what all your practicing has amounted to.”

I waved my hand that she should begin, but she stared at me flatly, and stumbled out, “When - when did you meet Tamlin?”

The hardest part was not flinching - not breaking eye contact with her. Tamlin... Tamlin? We were going to talk about - “Show me something impressive, and I’ll tell you,” I offered, because of course, I wouldn’t keep it from her if she really wanted to know. “Magic - for answers.”

And it worked. “I know what sort of game you’re playing-” I smirked and Feyre broke off. “Very well.”

Easy as breathing, Feyre held out her hand and willed water into her palm, bending and shaping it as merrily as she pleased - the artist at work in the huntress’ mind. A butterfly emerged and I didn’t realize until Feyre stared at me waiting, and I couldn’t fully... approve, just how much I did not want to discuss Tamlin with her.

“Tamlin was younger than me - born when the War started,” I said. Feyre watched me carefully, the butterfly flying and dancing on. “But after the War, when he’d matured, we got to know each other at various court functions. He...” I zoned in on that small butterfly, wishing I were it instead. My body stiffened, muscles contracting to keep a focus. “He seemed decent for a High Lord’s son. Better than Beron’s brood at the Autumn Court. Tamlin’s brothers were equally as bad, though. Worse. And they knew Tamlin would take the title one day. And to a half-breed Illyrian who’d had to prove himself, defend his power, I saw what Tamlin went through... I befriended him. Sought him out whenever I was able to get away from the war camps or court. Maybe it was pity, but...”  _ but he had been my friend... once _ , “I taught him some Illyrian techniques.”

“Did anyone know?”

She didn’t have to do party tricks. She didn’t have to prove herself. But I motioned to that little creature flitting about her hand anyway, just to buy me time.

I did not like the part that came next, the part that arrived after Feyre had folded her butterfly into a multitude of birds that soared away on the wind and flew circles above us. A distant, less damaged part of my mind could have sworn it heard them singing.

“Cassian and Azriel knew,” I said. “My family knew. And disapproved. But Tamlin’s father was threatened by it. By me. And because he was weaker than both me and Tamlin, he wanted to prove to the world that he wasn’t.” Somewhere in the clearing, I lost track of those songbirds. Feyre’s eyes were slowly dimming. “My mother and sister were to travel to the Illyrian war-camp to see me. I was supposed to meet them halfway, but I was busy training a new unit and decided to stay.

“Tamlin’s father, brothers, and Tamlin himself set out into the Illyrian wilderness, having heard from Tamlin -  _ from me _ \- where my mother and sister would be, that I had plans to see them. I was supposed to be there. I wasn’t. And they slaughtered my mother and sister anyway.”

I’d thought it’d been difficult not to break eye contact with her before, but... I’d been wrong. So devastatingly wrong.

Feyre had visibly paled, her skin grown whiter than the white-grey clouds above us that promised more rain and snow. Redness stung her eyes as she shook her head biting back - what, tears of denial? Sympathy? Grief? I decided I didn’t want to know and didn’t bother seeking out the bond for an indication.

“It should have been me,” I said, wondering that my voice didn’t waver. “They put their heads in boxes and sent them down the river - to the nearest camp. Tamlin’s father kept their wings as trophies. I’m surprised you didn’t see them pinned in the study.”

It was said with enough bitterness that we both looked away, or... or maybe only I had. But I went looking for those songbirds again wishing I could forget. When the boxes had arrived, when the camp lords had seen what was inside and told me... it didn’t matter that I was a half-breed or that my father was a High Lord they spat at every time he left the camps. Or that he’d mated an Illyrian woman they’d been inches from maiming for life. That day, even the fiercest Illyrian warriors were sick for me.

Feyre had turned the songbirds into animals of many shapes and varieties, painting them about the clearing. “What else?” I demanded.

The bond between us pulled taut, enough that I almost looked at her, if not for the animals that froze between leaps and scurries about the air, the water cracking into fragments of ice that mirrored the way I felt in my heart - the way we  _ both _ felt. They clattered to the ground and shattered, the sound rattling in my ears. Broken.

And it should have been me. I should have been a piece of ice on the floor or a head in a box or a wing on a wall, and my mother and sister well with my father in Velaris just now.

But Feyre had offered me another tribute of herself, so I forged ahead, bringing her story and mine full circle.

“When I heard, when my father heard... I wasn’t wholly truthful to you when I told you Under the Mountain that my father killed Tamlin’s father and brothers. I went with him. Helped him.” Feyre waited for me to go on, giving away nothing but that awful pressure testing the bond. “We winnowed to the edge of the Spring Court that night, then went the rest of the way on foot - to the manner. I slew Tamlin’s brothers on sight. I held their minds, and rendered them helpless while I cut them into pieces, then melted their brains inside their skulls. And when I got to the High Lord’s bedroom - he was dead. And my father... my father had killed Tamlin’s mother as well.”

Feyre’s head motioned heavily from side to side, but I couldn’t stop now I’d started. The ache was too heavy not to.

“My father had promised not to touch her. That we weren’t the kind of males who would do that. But he lied to me, and he did it, anyway. And then he went for Tamlin’s room.” The night swept by me. Suddenly, I didn’t see Feyre standing in front of me in the cold lonely snow. I saw my friend, who had murdered my family in exchange for me murdering his own. Part of me wished he was the one to hear this - to  _ know _ . “I tried to stop him. He didn’t listen. He was going to kill him, too. And I couldn’t... After all the death, I was done. I didn’t care that Tamlin had been there, had allowed them to kill my mother and sister, that he’d come to kill me because he didn’t want to risk standing against them. I was done with death. So I stopped my father before the door. He tried to go through me.” Vengeance. For his mate. For his light. For his heir, even. “Tamlin opened the door, saw us - smelled the blood already leaking into the hallway. And I didn’t even get to say a word before Tamlin killed my father in one blow.

“I felt the power shift to me, even as I saw it shift to him. And we just looked at each other, as we were both suddenly crowned High Lord - and then I ran.”

Like a coward. Like a strategist. Either way, I ran. I didn’t need the bond, or to be within Feyre’s mind, to know Tamlin had never been forthcoming with her concerning our personal history. The horror streaked in tears and outrage across her face, hiding those lovely freckles, said it all for me.

“He didn’t tell you any of that.” Not a question.

“I - I’m sorry,” she said, barely able to put sound to the words, her mouth hanging open slightly. I realized we were both unhinged.

“What do you possibly have to be sorry for?”

“I didn’t know.” Suddenly, she surged forward a step, fevered. “I didn’t know that he’d done that-”

And maybe it was again for the distraction. Maybe because I hoped she would ask me something else. Maybe it was for some other reason altogether that I had no clue about, but I motioned to her beautifully broken ice shards and shrugged, “Why did you stop?”

The bond held true for the span of a few seconds - and then fell. Into smoke. Into fire. Into a roaring of flames that seared the entirety of the clearing, wiping those ice shards into nonexistence.

For a heartbeat in time, my body did not recognize those flames as my mate’s own creation, her wrath twisting around us like snakes to strike back at what Tamlin had done. And I knew - finally, I knew. She wasn’t angry at me for my retaliation. She found it  _ justified _ .

My wings shot out behind me on either side, stretching past the fires as they rolled down to a low simmer, my body leaning instinctively towards Feyre before remembering she was their master, not their victim. It was consuming to watch and to feel, as her heart bled for me - for  _ them _ . I wasn’t sure how I was still standing upright when the fire cleared, if not for that brief instinct to keep her safe. The flames left nothing untouched.

“Feyre,” I said, no longer able to look anywhere but my mate. The sound of her name seemed to call something to attention just then. Her eyes pinned me down with so much pain and promise, that the darkness was her friend too. My darkness.

_ Her _ darkness.

Easing out in soothing strokes that kissed both our cheeks, until our flesh was filled with color again and our lungs felt relaxed enough to expand comfortably. Until there was nothing and no one but us and the night. The fire - the smoke. It was gone.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” she asked, face drawn up, eyes still rimmed red. But they were searching me, body and soul. I think something in both of us healed a little more right in that moment.

“I didn’t want you to think I was trying to turn you against him,” I replied.

Feyre softened and came right up into my arms, cutting the distance between us down to less than those dissipated flames, letting me wrap myself around her. Hold her. “I want to paint you,” she breathed, and a rush of wind swept right through me as I picked her up and pressed my lips to her ear.

“Nude would be best.”


	6. Chapters 46-47: The Darkness Begins to Stare Back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rhys and Feyre are out training in the Illyrian Mountains when they run in to Lucien and Rhys finally learns the full truth of where Feyre stands on going back to Tamlin.

We sat painfully close at dinner, to the point that no more than a needle would have separated our legs. After the afternoon in the forest, physical separation felt almost unbearable. Even walking back to the house after we’d landed out in the mud, we’d stayed close wondering if one of us might have the nerve to take the other’s hand.

But Cassian cut through me with a glance when we walked through the front door, motioning to Mor from across the kitchen. She sat the table picking at some knot in the wood grain. Wordlessly, I nodded at Cass.

Feyre was covered in a good bit of mud and snow, but she sank down across from Mor rather than the fire while I helped Cass finish up the stew he’d been working on. She shivered at the first sip.

“This soup is piping hot and the fire is delicious, but I think every bone in my body might shatter from how freezing this place is,” Feyre said, lapping up another bite.

Cassian nodded and poked around his own dish, but his eyes were quietly trained on Mor. “They pick these locations just to ensure the strongest among us survive.”

“Horrible people,” Mor said. She’d barely eaten anything. “I don’t blame Az for never wanting to come here.”

Cassian and I exchanged another look. “I take it training the girls went well.” Cassian’s answering drink of ale was answer enough.

“I got one of them to confess they hadn’t received a lesson in ten days. They’d all been too busy with ‘chores,’ apparently.” He shook his head, a scowl plastered all over him.

“No born fighters in this lot?”

“Three, actually,” and Mor looked a little brighter. “Three out of ten isn’t bad at all. The others, I’d be happy if they just learned to defend themselves. But those three... They’ve got the instinct - the claws. It’s their stupid families that want them clipped and breeding.”

Like Mor. Like her own family had wanted her. The family she’d visit tomorrow.

She stared for far too long at the bowl in front of her, pushing the spoon around and forcing down bites, that Feyre stood suddenly and took her dish to the sink. Cassian set his own spoon down and turned in his chair, clear that no one else but Mor sat in the room.

I stood, right as Cassian asked quietly, “When do you head for the Hewn City tomorrow?” Mor’s nose pinched.

“After breakfast. Before.” Her head shook softly. “I don’t know. Maybe in the afternoon, when they’re all waking up.”

Cassian moved under the table, likely taking her hand, and when Mor looked up, understanding passed between them. And I wondered if it was Cassian - Cassian who had been the one to really break her free from her shackles - that remained the only reason she had stomached coming here with us. The only reason she felt safe and loved enough to do it.

Feyre and I shuffled for the stairs, not bothering with ‘goodnights’ so as not to risk interrupting. I couldn’t bear to when Mor finally had something other than dread on her face.

For her own part, Feyre was distraction enough. From the table to the sink to the stairs, our bodies stayed close circling one another and daring to touch, but not quite closing the gap. There was fire there as my eyes trailed over her back climbing those stairs.

Fire. Today this woman had lit the world on fire for me. I wanted to light it back.

By the time we’d made it to the upstairs landing, and only two doors remained, a warmth from Feyre’s fire had made it to my core and settled nicely. Feyre stared between the two doors looking like she’d rather not choose. I pointed at the second nearest her.

“You and Mor can share tonight - just tell her to shut up if she babbles too much.”

She didn’t laugh. Just stared hard at the door. And I thought maybe she wasn’t the only one preoccupied with my cousin and what was twitching inside that beautiful head of hers downstairs. So I grabbed the knob to my own door, ready to leave her be and ignore the fire for the night, when... nothing. Absolutely nothing except Feyre standing still and quiet, and the bond... pulling taut again. Taut with - with  _ heat _ .

My hand stilled on the knob. And slowly I turned. And found Feyre’s eyes trailing up my body one piece at a time, lingering here and there, her lips slightly parted.

And her eyes. They filled with that heat, curled and smoked and... considered me. It was one thing, perhaps, not to touch all through dinner. It was now entirely another to allow rooms and walls to separate us.

And we’d flown so close, her skin so comfortably against my neck and hands as my wings had beaten away an ancient storm behind us, that I wondered...

I drew breath to ask her - to ask if my mate would like to join me for the evening. To talk. To sleep. To love. Whatever she wanted - whatever scraps she’d give a despised half-breed of the north.

But as soon as my lips split, Feyre whirled around and disappeared inside her room. The fire inside me dulled into a depressing, needing ache to touch her all the more. Something I was sure some part of her wanted, but with a private room all her own, the option to keep pretending remained too easy to take. 

So maybe tomorrow, I wouldn’t give her one. And let come what may.

* * *

The scent of rain was refreshing, the cold shower I had needed all night as I tried in vain to sleep. My mind had been too preoccupied with Feyre to bother risking the nightmares and the dreams for another night. She was simply... everywhere now.

Cassian had risen first and opened his door at about the same moment Feyre had opened hers. She must have shaken her head because Cassian’s had shoulders slumped. “When?” he had asked.

“About an hour ago,” Feyre had replied. “She told me not to bother waking you.”

Cassian had politely nodded and closed the door. From where I still laid on my bed, I could see the heaviness weighing him down even as he stared at the door. I wished Az had come. At least Mor would be back by nightfall.

I waited until breakfast was over to tell him Feyre and I wouldn’t be back until the following day. He seemed more concerned with getting out into the rings to push some of the novices around than dealing with our extended absence anyway.

And now, trailing Feyre by several feet through the forests where we’d flown miles from camp and lugging all of our equipment while she teased me with the sway of her hips, I half wished we’d stayed. She was going to drive me up the wall, that fire from the hallway wholly unabated by the rain.

Every step I took, she took another and it felt like my future was in front of me and moving further away at the same time. She kept her mental shields well up, but I could sense her overall mood was pensive, even a tad brooding.

It was only when I’d caught up to her that I realized she had stopped her hike. Her shields were beginning to crack ever so slightly as her thoughts struggled, just enough to let me feel a little more - unusual, given how superb she typically was now at maintaining them. I half wondered if it was intentional, but...

Feyre turned to look at me and I could feel the tension rolling around in her head as she took me in, her eyes trailing over my wings the same way she had last night - with questions - until she met my gaze.

Silently, I lifted an eyebrow. If she had questions, I would answer. I would answer anything for her. I could practically see the words forming in her mind and I pressed against the bond without breaking her down, revealing how desperate I was to know every inch of her. Let her see some of  _ my _ fire, what she kindled in me every day now.

What I didn’t expect was the hand she held up instead and the small flicker of a smile. I caught a flash of fire in her heart - real, tangible fire from the days of Autumn - and concern for my safety. It was hard not to laugh, so I instead bowed lowed for her to go on and play, wondering if she realized the double meaning in my gesture as there was only one person on this earth I would ever bow for beyond my crown.

And for her, I was ready to do it.

Feyre turned her back on me, rolling her eyes at my bravado as she went and I felt my insides turn into a blaze. Sometimes... she could be so wicked, so playful. And I  _ liked _ when she was playful. It was us seated that throne in the Court of Nightmares all over again, my fingertips brushing the inside of her thigh as she ground against me and I felt how moist she was.

I still wanted to feel that. Fuck, I wanted to taste that. I wanted to take her further into the woods and fuck her where no one else would hear the sound except the mountains and the trees.

Feyre blushed even from so many feet away as I licked along the bond between us, filing that bridge between our minds with a lazy lust. I sent the caress intently, amusement flowing with it as she tried not to let it show how much she was beginning to squirm inside. My crotch went full with heat.

She had just paused in a clearing and turned to face me, either to begin her magic or to tell me off - I hoped for the later - when it happened.

A bolt of dread went through me as I watched a group of four men dressed in colors of a court I had come to loathe surround my mate. And with them at the center standing before Feyre was Lucien.

A million decisions ran through my mind on the spot, each overriding the last and vying for position. My instinct was to winnow us away immediately, all risk of my magic being tracked be damned. But one look at Feyre and I knew I couldn’t do it. She could be my mate if she wanted to, but she hadn’t decided that yet. This decision right here, right now was hers alone and until I knew what she wanted, I would let her handle Lucien.

I would not make the same mistake I had with Tarquin. _ I wouldn’t. _

“We’ve been hunting for you for over two months,” Lucien said. He sounded so relieved, like he thought this was going to be easy. I prayed he was wrong, tried not to... not to panic. If as much for Feyre’s sake as mine. I had no idea how open she was to the bond just then.

“How did you find me?” Feyre asked. It was too short for me to gauge how she felt and with Lucien suddenly present, her mental shields had snapped firmly back in place.

“Someone tipped us off you’d been out here, but it was luck that we caught your scent on the wind, and-” Lucien paused as Feyre retreated from his approach and even at this distance, I could tell he was confused. I made a mental note to check in with Azriel later about who Lucien’s mystery  _ tip _ had been. Suddenly, his voice was tight. “We need to get out of here. Tamlin’s been - he hasn’t been himself. I’ll take you right to-”

“No,” Feyre said.

My heart skipped a beat. Though she whispered the word, it was firm and binding. A declaration. A choice.

And Lucien didn’t want to believe it.

“Feyre,” he said carefully, his hands tensing at his side. Weapons were very much within reach, though nothing like the display Feyre herself wore. “Let’s go home.”

Home.

I wracked my brain as quickly as I could, but... Feyre had never called the Night Court her home. And much as I despised Tamlin, he had made a home for Feyre once, a home I suddenly realized she might remember with Lucien standing there and... miss. A home she never felt she had with me.

There was heat, I thought. And Starfall had been a dream. But both times we’d chosen to go our ways separately, to retreat to different spaces. And all this time I still hadn’t told her the truth.

And now here we were, surrounded by soldiers. This was the life she would have staying with me. Maybe... I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry. Maybe she wouldn’t want this life after all.

Sorrow began to overtake my heart as I saw what might happen. It would break me to see her return to the Spring Court with Lucien and even now standing there just thinking about the possibility, I felt like I would die if she chose it. But if she did, if she… left me, whatever this bond between us had become, I would find a way to be okay with it. I had to for her.

Feyre squared Lucien up and my breath hung on every word. “That stopped being my home the day you let him lock me up inside of it,” Feyre said.

And Cauldron - it was all I could do to focus as the relief flooded me. I knew in that moment, perhaps more clearly than ever before now that I could look in on her from the outside, that Feyre felt something for me, enough to choose me in some capacity. And that I wasn’t going to go back on my promise to tell her everything - and soon.

My desire to find out exactly how she would choose me weighed my feet down as I dug into the ground and prepared for Lucien’s move that would prompt me to take off.

“It was a mistake,” Lucien retorted. The poor fox looked aghast. He hadn’t come prepared for a fight. “We all made mistakes. He’s sorry - more sorry than you realize. So am I.”

Lucien tried to near Feyre once more, but again she edged away, only she was running out of room. I could sense the tension in her rising as she turned the arrow pulled in her hands directly on Lucien. His eyes widened.

“Put the arrow down,” Lucien said and the way he said it, so condescending, as if he could control her just like Tamlin did with some simple twist of words. But Feyre - my Feyre - held her ground. The bond started to hum.

“Don’t. Touch. Me.”

“You don’t understand the mess we’re in, Feyre. We -  _ I  _ need you home. Now.”

The next few seconds were a blur as Feyre moved, and Lucien after her. I winnowed into the air towards the spot where Feyre had been to find she was already gone on her own cloud of smoke. Lucien stumbled back and I rode around on Feyre’s trail until I found her safely out of the reach of Lucien and his sentinels.

And it was intoxicating.

Feyre’s magic hung electric in the air between us. It didn’t matter if I had been there or not to save her, she’d saved herself and she knew it. She stood proud, a fierce glare in her eyes aimed straight at Lucien as he righted himself to search for Feyre, only to find me standing by her side with power dripping off of me - off of  _ us _ . I would make her my queen, this warrior at my side, if she would let me.

The mask appeared easily. Lucien had clearly not been prepared for such a sight. His entire body seized as he took me in, myself now dressed formally in sleekest black, without my wings or the fighting armor. Dressed to kill. Not even the rain pelting my face and soaking my clothes felt cold.

“Little Lucien,” I said with wicked amusement. “Didn’t the Lady of the Autumn Court ever tell you that when a woman says no, she means it?”

“Prick,” Lucien spat and I was almost happy until he added on, “You filthy, whoring prick.” The word unleashed a snarl from deep within my chest. “What have you done, Feyre?” Lucien asked her, horrified at what he was seeing.

“Don’t come looking for me again,” Feyre breathed.

“He’ll never stop looking for you; never stop waiting for you to come home.”

Home.

There was that word again. I admitted a small trace of fear to myself as Feyre paused. Lucien snatched at his chance.

_ He’ll never stop looking... waiting... A lifetime of high lords and assassins chasing you... _

“What did he do to you? Did he take your mind and-”

“Enough,” I said with more grace than I felt. But I had to be convincing. “Feyre and I are busy. Go back to your lands before I send your heads as a reminder to my old friend about what happens when Spring Court flunkies set foot in my territory.”

But Lucien didn’t budge.

“You made your point, Feyre - now come home.”

“I’m not a child playing games,” Feyre replied and I knew he’d finally overstepped with her. Feyre didn’t need to be locked up. It was why she left the Spring Court in the first place. Out here in the wild, she was her own person and Lucien had no idea how dangerous that could be for him if he forced her back towards her former self.

“Careful, Lucien,” I said with delight. “Or Feyre darling will send you back in pieces, too.”

He looked ready to tear himself in two, to fall on bended knee and unravel all those thick red braids until she gave in. “We are not your enemies, Feyre. Things got bad, Ianthe got out of hand, but it doesn’t mean you give up-”

“You gave up,” Feyre whispered. Time seemed to stop on those three little words, quiet but full of endless pain... and remembrance. In a way, it broke my heart all over again. But the strength that followed ensured both our hearts stayed in tact. “ _ You _ gave up on me,” she continued. “You were my friend. And you picked  _ him _ \- picked obeying him, even when you saw what his orders and his rules did to me. Even when you saw me wasting away  _ day by day.” _

“You have  _ no idea _ how volatile those first few months were,” Lucien snapped. He was angry, probably from shock, at how difficult Feyre was being. He had thought this would be easy. “We  _ needed _ to present a unified, obedient front, and I was supposed to be the example to which all others in our court were held.”

“You  _ saw _ what was happening to me. But you were too afraid of him to truly do anything about it. I begged you. I begged you so many times to help me, to get me out of the house, even for an hour. And you left me alone, or shoved me into a room with Ianthe, or told me to stick it out.”

With a steely edge to his low voice cut sharp like the finest sword, Lucien dared his final resort. “And I suppose the Night Court is so much better?” he asked, setting my soul ablaze with rage. Always the whore. Always the villain. No chance for truth to see the light of day. If Lucien did not quit after this, I was going to tear him limb from limb, past histories be damned, and let Tamlin see how that stood for a response. We’d go to war shortly anyway.

But I didn’t have to tear him apart. All of my doubts about the Night Court not being Feyre’s home started dissipating in my mind like tiny bubbles floating away on the wind as I felt Feyre shift beside me. The entire clearing seemed to kneel in the presence of her unfolding power. Her anger matched mine. Her desire to protect was my own and cauldron damn us, it raged so strong. I dared to slide my eyes away from their careful watch over Lucien to look at her and beamed with joy as she even physically mirrored me, talons appearing at her hands and wings -  _ Illyrian wings! _ \- slipping out from between her shoulder blades on her exposed back.

And when Feyre spoke, it was thickest, blackest Night made manifest.

“When you spend so long trapped in the darkness, Lucien, you find that the darkness begins to stare back,” she spat. I could feel Amren next to me, nodding her approval. She was playing a part just as I had always done, keeping everyone safe - my friends, Velaris, even me - when she didn’t have to and I adored her for it.

Oh no, there was no doubt now where Feyre’s home was if ever there was any before.

I sent rapturous, wicked joy down the bond, praising her, delighting in this beautiful, bold woman before me with these wings so fierce and perfect at her back, a symbol that she would fight. The rain slid down the membranes smoothly and I wondered that they didn’t quite shiver. I hoped she knew in that moment not just how much I approved of her actions then and there, but also just how much I  _ admired _ her too.

Lucien’s mouth hung open agape. “What did you do to yourself?” he breathed - horrified for her - for his one time friend. Finally, he sounded defeated. The razor thin smile Feyre gave in reply, so feral and animalistic, was a final knife to the heart.

“The human you knew died Under the Mountain. I have no interest in spending immortality as a High Lord’s pet.”

“Feyre-”

“Tell Tamlin,” Feyre pressed on, “if he sends anyone else into these lands, I will hunt each and every one of you down. And I will demonstrate exactly what the darkness taught me.”

For what it was worth, Lucien did look momentarily broken. He snapped back into his cold and calculating persona immediately, but for half a second, I saw the grief written in his eyes and was struck by the sudden thought that this was costing him personally to leave here without her. That maybe just as Tamlin and I had once been friends destroyed by war and feuding, so too had Lucien and Feyre.

And then his eyes crawled over to me through the wings and knives banded at her waist and mud caking her boots, disgust filling up the features on his face. My sympathy died. “You’re dead,” he said venomously. “You, and your entire cursed court.” For once, I didn’t even care.

Before I could retaliate, he had winnowed, the sentries with him. And Feyre was left staring miles into the distance, a hard threatening look burned into her face determined not to believe he was really gone. Her wings and talons still hung around her, tensing in the air not knowing the threat was gone. I dared run a finger along the veining in her wings and she shuddered, the spell broken. Relief ran through me at the same time I was so overwhelmed just to touch her again.

Out of sight, I shook my head to the side once incredulous.  _ Wings. My mate had made herself wings. _ I had never seen anything more attractive or beautiful in all my life than my mate with Illyrian wings.

“How?” I gasped, stepping in front of her. We were inches apart.

“Shape-shifting,” she said, still a little rigid. But then her eyes found mine and in the next few precious moments that passed between us, she softened. It was as if she was seeing something in me as I stared at her, trying to send all the love I felt for her through our bond, and it melted her. The wings, the talons, the tension - it all disappeared, no trace of it left in sight where my beautiful Feyre stood so close to me. I needed to touch her again. Her scent, her magic - it was everywhere.

I recalled my own wings, my leathers, casting aside the High Lord for the Illyrian.

“That was a very convincing performance,” I said, melting a little bit myself.

“I gave him what he wanted to see. We should find another spot.”

It was as if she had read my mind. Gladly, I picked her up, ready to fly her away anywhere she wanted. But even as I held her, I could feel the thoughts swarming around inside her head. It wasn’t Lucien anymore, but…

“Are you all right?” I finally asked, fear lacing my question before it was met with the soothing feeling of Feyre pressing herself firmly into my chest, cradled as close as she could nest herself.

_ Home _ .

“The fact that it was so easy, that I felt so little, upsets me more than the encounter itself,” she explained.

And all at once, we were flying and I was angry again. Angry at Lucien and Tamlin and that entire damned court for betraying Feyre so cruelly, Feyre who I now stared at as we flew further into the skies.

“I knew things were bad,” I said over the wind and rain. “But I thought Lucien, at least, would have stepped in.”

“I thought so, too,” Feyre said. She sounded so tiny and disappointed, as if realizing just how far she had come from her first days in Prythian where Tamlin was concerned. I gave her a gentle squeeze and she looked up at me back into my eyes and I couldn’t stop myself. I sincerely hoped that maybe one day her and Lucien could reconcile - somehow.

“You look good with wings,” I said, kissing her brow. I was tired of fearing open affection for her that wasn’t a joke or a tool to pull her out of something.

And it seemed to work. Feyre’s chest warmed as she nuzzled ever closer against me and together, we flew and flew and flew.


	7. Chapter 48: When I Lick You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Feyre and Rhys stop in at a remote inn for the night while out training. Intense fingerbanging ensues. ;)

To say the inn where we were staying was cramped would have been an understatement, but there it was. The attic room given us was tiny, Feyre was grumpy as hell from training, and I was horny as fuck from flying her here against my chest through the wind and rain.

The encounter with Lucien seemed to have triggered something in us both that even the Court of Nightmares and Starfall had not managed. I thought about how Feyre had looked with those powerful wings gliding out of her back the entire flight to the inn, trying not to drop her in my anxiety as we flew.

But we both felt it. The  _ shift _ . A primal sensation building between us, the final missing piece that would undo the tension we shared. I was done pretending with her that it didn’t exist anymore. The lone bed boldly staring at us from within four tightly packed walls of the inn, too narrow and dingy to house what I felt for Feyre, seemed to throw that realization back in our faces.

“I asked for two,” I said automatically, my hands thrown up in surrender over the threshold to the room.

Feyre seemed to be thinking along the same lines as she didn’t dare move within the room. “If you can’t risk using magic, then we’ll have to warm each other,” she said, a blush immediately overtaking her frozen cheeks. “Body heat,” she spat out, but not before a smug look had crept onto my face. “My sisters and I had to share a bed - I’m used to it.”

“I’ll try to keep my hands to myself.”

“I’m hungry.”

_ So am I _ , I thought, but not for that kind of nourishment.

“I’ll go down and get us food while you change.” Her brows rose in genuine curiosity. The danger of where this night might lead had us both thrown off our game. “Remarkable as my own abilities are to blend in,” I explained, “my face is recognizable. I’d rather not be down there long enough to be noticed.”

My fingers were agitated as they worked on pulling the cloak over my wings. I wasn’t even inside the room yet and already it felt suffocating. There was no way I could let myself lose control with Feyre here in this miserable den, far from what I’d hoped it would be. Muscles screamed at me as I stretched for the fastening to cloak myself, the result of a long day exposed to the rough elements raging outside. It made all the things my body needed feel so out of reach.

I caught Feyre staring, a glazed look in her eyes studying me intently. Darkness brooded over my body while my fingers worked, a darkness that was annoyed and angry at my limitations, but Feyre was drinking it in like fine wine.

“I love it when you look at me like that,” I said, my voice low and aching.

“Like what?” she asked.

“Like my power isn’t something to run from. Like you see me.” Her words at the Court of Nightmares came back to me, warming my skin against the chill in the room.

_ You are good, Rhys. I see you. _

And she’d meant it too.

“I was afraid of you at first,” Feyre said and I smiled because I knew it wasn’t true.

_ This mask does not scare me. _

“No, you weren’t,” I countered, finishing up the hood of my cloak. “Nervous, maybe, but never afraid. I’ve felt the genuine terror of enough people to know the difference. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t keep away.”

The intimacy of this fact threatened to tip me over and I darted away from her and our cramped quarters before she could say anything. As I waited for our food to be drawn up, I tried not to think about the layers of damp clothing she would be removing floors above me, sticking to her skin and hair, her nakedness against the sheets as she sat on the bed and removed her moistened undergarments to change. I shuddered the thought away before it could get the better of me by adding her newly fashioned wings to the equation.

When the inn keep handed me the trays of food, I demanded a bottle of wine instead of the water. Hopefully it would loosen up my body enough to cooperate with my mind from touching her all night. He handed me the bottle and two glasses with a grunt, glad to be rid of me.

The stairs groaned beneath my feet as I climbed mocking the release I was unable to unleash and I came to stand outside our door. Feyre opened it before I could knock and stood there, her hair dripping water down her neck from the rain. But it was the sweater that did me in -  _ my _ sweater that she was wearing. I could smell myself on it - on her, like a feral dog marking its territory.

_ Mine, mine, mine _ .

My groin gave an adrenaline inducing twitch. Fuck the small room. I was touching her by the end of the night - somehow.

“Tell me that’s stew I smell,” she asked, her eyes closing as she took a wonderful inhale. I tried not stare at her lips as I brushed past her and set the tray on the bed, glad of her question to free me from my masochistic thoughts.

“Rabbit stew,” I said. “If the cook’s to be believed.”

“I could have lived without hearing that.” I grinned at her and thought I saw some of that mischief dancing from her as well, but she quickly turned her back on me. “What’s the other one beneath?”

I moved around the bed, tucking my wings to my back as tightly as I could to avoid knocking into the wall. “Meat pie. I didn’t dare ask what kind of meat. Go ahead and eat. I’m changing first.”

“You should have changed before going downstairs.” A casual comment, but there was a stiffness to it that suggested she was avoiding me. I shirked off my cloak and started in on my tunic trying very hard to ignore the fact that I was going to be naked in front of her in a matter of seconds.

“You were the one training all day,” I said, hoping to fill the air with something other than the fact that there was a bed between us and my half-hard cock was close to being out as I swapped my pants for a clean pair. I could hardly think of anything else. “Getting you a hot meal was the least I could do.”

Silence reigned supreme. I listened to Feyre sip her stew, her lips making slurping noises as she sucked that sounded of -

I worked faster and finished dressing myself, the last of the cotton shirt taking some extra attention to fit my wings. I sat on the bed and grabbed my plate when I was done.

“How do you get it over the wings?” Feyre asked, conversation at last.

“The back is made of slats that close with hidden buttons… But in normal circumstances, I just use magic to seal it shut.”

“It seems like you have a great deal of magic constantly in use at once.”

“It helps me work off the strain of my power,” I said between bites with a careless shrug. “The magic needs release - draining - or else it’ll build up and drive me insane. That’s why we call the Illyrian stones Siphons - they help them channel the power, empty it when necessary.”

Feyre paused and set her bowl aside looking wide-eyed and surprised. “Actually insane?” she asked. There was her innate curiosity again about the world she still knew so little of that I adored so much.

“Actually insane,” I confirmed. “Or so I was warned.” As if in reflex to my words, my back tightened and something deep inside of myself written into the fabric of my soul twitched, like an itch I couldn’t scratch so long as my powers were traceable. “I can feel it, though - the pull of it, if I go too long without releasing it.”

“That’s horrible,” Feyre said, looking at me from across the bed with concern. And for once, I didn’t doubt that it was real.

“Everything has its cost, Feyre. If the price of being strong enough to shield my people is that I have to struggle with that same power, then I don’t mind. Amren taught me enough about controlling it. Enough that I owe a great deal to her. Including the current shield around my city while we’re here.”

I raised another spoonful of stew to my lips and stopped when Feyre’s grip on her mental shields went out from under her and a horrid thought, one I despised, that told her unfairly of how useless and freakish she was fell out. It couldn’t have been further from the truth. Even sitting there with her hair a mess and not a single weapon on her, Feyre was powerful - a perfectly crafted arrow flying through the night only the dark huntress herself was capable of seeing.

“You’re not,” I said with no room for argument as to the question of if she were worthless.

“Don’t read my thoughts,” she grumbled.

I set my emptied bowl of stew down a tad too hard, some of my tension releasing in that snap. “I can’t help what you sometimes shout down the bond. And besides, everything is usually written on your face, if you know where to look,” as I always did. “Which made your performance today so much more impressive.”

Feyre gave me careful consideration before leaning back against the pillows of the bed clutching her wine glass close to her. Something glared behind those eyes as she sipped her wine. I continued eating, thinking her frustrated at my reproachful tone, when she surprised me mid-bite.

“Did you think I would go with him?”

My eyes darted to hers across the fork at my lips. An awful truth twisted in my gut cutting at the desire I’d built up for her. “I heard every word between you. I knew you could take care of yourself, and yet…” I had to take a bite to buy myself time, scared to admit what I had prayed in that forest she wouldn’t do. “And yet I found myself deciding that if you took his hand, I would find a way to live with it. It would be your choice.”

And I meant it despite how vulnerable it left me.

Feyre casually stole a sip of her wine, letting it mask the need behind her next question. “And if he had grabbed me?”

At this, my hesitations were non-existent. “Then I would have torn apart the world to get you back.” Feyre’s eyes beamed, refusing to look away from mine as if to say,  _ Good _ .

“I would have fired at him,” she said in a breathy voice, “if he had tried to hurt you.”

“I know.” That ache from earlier that I’d  _ almost _ forgotten about snaked its way back into the tightness at my groin as we watched each other knowing. That she would protect me, care for me - love me even, made me mad for her that much more. It was the closest she’d yet come to admitting it.

And even though it was soft and loving, there was heat behind it, fire in those bright blue-grey eyes that had stared me down at Starfall and sought to defend me and know my soul. Feyre was passion divine. I started to harden again from across the bed in my desire to worship at that altar of hers housed underneath my sweater.

“One thought for another,” she said suddenly. “No training involved, please.” Irony sprung out like an Illyrian blade ready to cut me to the quick. I chuckled before downing the remainder of my wine and gave her the honest truth. No more hiding. I was done cowering from how I felt.

“I’m thinking,” I said as she licked her tongue over that rich, full bottom lip of hers I wanted to sink my teeth into, “that I look at you and feel like I’m dying. Like I can’t breathe. I’m thinking that I want you so badly I can’t concentrate half the time I’m around you, and this room is too small for me to properly bed you. Especially with the wings.”

The most beautiful blush worthy of making an Illyrian sunset jealous blossomed over her cheeks. I meant every word. And even if my wings were forced out in this inn with my magic barred from retracting them, it didn’t matter. If I had her - no,  _ when _ I had her - she would have all of me as my mate properly deserved.

Feyre took a long sip of her wine polishing off the glass and setting it aside. I realized I wasn’t even nervous for what she might say. Part of me already knew what it was.

“I’m thinking that I can’t stop thinking about you. And that it’s been that way for a long while.” My heart lept in my chest.  _ More, more, more - give me more. Please. _ “Even before I left the Spring Court. And maybe that makes me a traitorous, lying piece of trash, but-”

“It doesn’t,” I cut her off, again with no room for argument. She seemed stunned into acceptance of what I’d said.

We sat there, staring each other down, the bond thick between us. Her blood called to me from across that bond to take her, flip her over, shred the sweater filled with my scent and ravish that beautiful, strong body where she dwelt.

Feyre swallowed, as though she herself felt the same - wanted it just as badly. “We should go to sleep.”

It was a long pause as I worked the fire within me down enough to acquiesce. “All right,” I agreed, wanting to do anything but. I should have just taken her in the direction of one of my many hideaways in these mountains so I could bed her properly.

Feyre undid the covers nearest the slanting of the wall and tucked herself in whilst I crawled underneath after her. I blew the candles out at the bedside and listened to the silence fill the room save for the pitter-patter of the rain outside. I laid there watching her, her back turned to me, imagining all the things I could do to that back alone. What would it take to get those wings out again? Where would I have to kiss, to touch? We were only inches apart, the bed was so small, and I could both see and feel her body trembling.

“You’re shivering so hard the bed is shaking,” I said.

“My hair is wet,” she said casually and I smirked to myself. I was willing to bet it wasn’t the only wet thing in the room.

Pushing myself across the bed, I slid hungrily around her. “No expectations,” I said cooly just behind her ear and enjoying the shiver over her skin. My hands wrapped over and under either side of her pulling her tight against my chest while my legs tangled themselves between her own, settling in. “Just body heat.”

Her body was supple and warm against me, feeling like a perfect match against where we made contact. I cursed the fabric of my shirt and her sweater between us wishing some of Beron’s fire would come bursting out of her body to burn it away and leave us a mess of skin and sweat in its wake. My wings folded over Feyre, cocooning us in place.

I closed my eyes, contentedly reserved to fall asleep as we were for the night thinking this was as close as she’d let me get, when a cold, gentle touch met a tender trail along my right wing. And despite how much I had tried all evening not to, I hardened immediately at the unexpected touch.

“Your finger… is very cold,” I said against the skin of her neck, barely able to maintain composure. Her neck shifted more openly at my mouth as she stroked my wing again allowing her nail to drag against the membrane. She might as well have been stroking the length at my crotch aching for her for all it did to me.

My body clenched in response, my hand gripping her stomach. “You cruel, wicked thing,” I purred in her ear, my nose moving to graze along her neck. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you manners?”

“I never knew Illyrians were such sensitive babies,” Feyre replied before running another finger along the membrane. My hips bucked forward into her and I knew she felt how hard I was. Heat rippled across her skin at the touch, but Feyre soaked it right up, dragging two of her fingers wickedly yet again over my wings. Her stroke sent my hips in motion against her in time to her caresses longing to be released.

And I decided that if she was finally willing to play, so was I.

My hand at her stomach commenced a slow, lazy tour of the area around her navel, taunting Feyre with possibilities. She pushed back against me, her neck arching enough so that her chest lifted, clearing a path for my other hand towards her breast.

“Greedy,” I said full of lusty headiness. I wouldn’t let her come quite so easily. No, if I had to wait to bed her, I would make her beg for this, prove to me she wanted it just as badly as I did. “First you terrorize me with your cold hands, now you want… what is it you want, Feyre?”

It was the same question I’d asked her outside the Court of Nightmares. But this time, I was going to get an answer out of her. I skimmed along the outside of her sweater, my hand stroking against her breasts. My other hand dipped lower on her stomach close to the lining of her pants. I didn’t want to wait. She was wet and I didn’t need to touch her to know. I could _ smell _ it on her thick as smoke after a fire.

“What is it you want, Feyre?” I repeated, my teeth scraping her neck as my own body’s responses amplified. She arched when I nipped at her earlobe demanding an answer, a low whimper hissing out of her.

“I want a distraction,” she breathed. “I want - fun.”

My whole body stilled, temporarily lost in the haze that this might still only be a game for her, that she might not mean it. But then my hands remembered the heat pooling between her legs and mine and I threw explanations of the mate bond out the window, my body begging to touch her.  _ Anything _ if I could just touch her.

“Then allow me the pleasure of distracting you,” I growled, my hand plunging beneath the sweater and colliding skin on skin with her breasts. Feyre groaned as my mind exploded at the sensation of feeling her up. How long had I wanted just to  _ feel her _ . “I love these,” I said, wildness taking over my voice as I started to lose control of myself. “You have no idea how much I love these.”

I tormented her chest in every way that I knew, loving how her nipples peaked for me and made her grind harder against my hips, against my cock throbbing behind her. “Stop that,” I said roughly in her ear to make her shudder. “You’ll ruin  _ my _ fun.”

And indeed, it was more fun than I had ever imagined. My hands weren’t even lower than her waist and I was in hell, rotting from the pleasure of her skin, still smelling of the pine-soaked rain outside. She twisted, all sorts of breathy little pants running out of her, ignoring my pleas, and trying to reach around for me. But I held her firm, blocking her access to my groin.

“I want to touch you first,” I said utterly unhinged, my voice becoming someone else’s, someone I’d never heard before. I had never wanted someone so badly, never imagined I could need Feyre this much, mate and all. “Just - let me touch you.”

I squeezed her breast hard and Feyre calmed caving in to me, too tormented for words. My hands trailed her skin like a moth drawn in to the flame, too stupid to stay away. And when my fingers finally threatened to dip below the hemline at her pants, I was at last greeted with her voice that had turned equally as primal and needing as my own.

“Please,” she begged, barely able to get the lone syllable out. It satisfied me to no end.

“There are those missing manners,” I grinned into her neck. My hand sank below the fabric at her waist and  _ stroked _ .

Feyre groaned at the same moment I snarled in wicked approval of the wetness between her thighs. She was so thoroughly soaked, I needn’t even have pushed myself towards her before my fingers went sliding down, down, down. My thumb circled her clit in teasing sweeps until finally, neither of us could take it anymore and I pushed down, my entire body clenching around her.

Feyre’s own body cried out, her hips buckling against mine as rapid pants poured out of her. I laughed insufferably, wanting to pull  _ more, more, more _ out of her. “Like that?” I asked intoxicated by her reaction to my touch, that I could elicit such a response from my mate. A frenzy - the frenzy of our magic - sprang to life inside me.

She groaned, begging my fingers lowered and I obliged… to a point. I savored the feeling of her slickness on my fingers inviting me in, hardening beyond what I thought possible as I relished the promise of how she would taste on my tongue when I was finished. “Please,” Feyre gasped, again only managing a single syllable. Her ass ground against my hips and I sent a finger diving into her.

“Fuck!” I swore at her ear. “Feyre… Oh, fuck.” Her insides tightened around me, groping for more, begging not to lose contact. I kissed desperately at her neck, her ears, whatever my lips could get a hold of before slipping a second finger inside her as she writhed against me. The bond blossomed open between us, and Feyre sent a torrent of heat and  _ need _ across it that trembled and shook.

The sensation that had been pooling at her core began to grow, building towards that all consuming swell that controlled us both. “That’s it,” I murmured, my tongue licking her ear.  _ Come for me _ , I begged inside my head.  _ Come for your mate. _

And then, before I knew what she was doing, Feyre sprung free of my grasp just enough to pivot herself around and catch my stare, a blue wildness pouring out of her eyes as she leaned up and captured my mouth with hers and I was lost. She bit my bottom lip exactly as I’d wanted to bite hers and I groaned, my fingers thrusting into her harder automatically.

Her lips parted. My tongue surged inside. I stroked against her, mimicking the movement of my fingers at her core until the sensations were in sync. I could taste her all day. An eternity wouldn’t have been long enough. I might have come just fucking her with my hands. And when I couldn’t stand it any longer, I pulled back just enough to watch her finish for me.

“You have no idea how much I -  _ Feyre _ ,” I groaned and she shattered. Pressure squeezed tight around my fingers soaked in her wetness as she came. I swallowed her cry with my lips before it could drown out the sound of the rain beyond the inn. Her body shook and trembled a second time and I swore, guiding her through the end of it until she was left in utter ruins within my arms, the sweat between our skin gluing us together.

Her head turned leaning against my arm to look at me as I removed myself from inside her, ready to offer her more honesty. “I wanted to do that when I felt how drenched you were at the Court of Nightmares. I wanted to have you right there in the middle of everyone. But mostly I just wanted to do this.”

Without breaking eye contact, I brought those two cum-stained fingers to my lips and sucked. The taste that met my tongue was better than the finest wine or the sweetest honey.

Feyre moved instantly, pupils blown wide ready to overtake me, but I grabbed her hand. My cock ached horribly for reprieve, but I would be damned if I didn’t hold true to my promise not to bed her in this wretched room that was far too small to contain what I would do to her when we mated.

“When you lick me,” I said, my voice rough as I took hold of her hand with a hard grip, “I want to be alone - far away from everyone. Because when you lick me, Feyre,” and I leaned in to give a few last teasing kisses along her neck that sent her shivering all over again, “I’m going to let myself roar loud enough to bring down a mountain.”

I shifted her body so that she was forced to return to her original position against my chest, my arms back around her in a close, unyielding embrace. I laughed as her body protested, screaming at me with desire for more.

“And when I lick  _ you _ ,” I pressed on, “I want you splayed out on a table like my own personal feast.” The whimper Feyre choked on was the final nail in my coffin. “I’ve had a long time to think about how and where I want you. I have no intention of doing it all in one night. Or in a room where I can’t even fuck you against the wall.”

Her body gave out. My fingers at her stomach reached the waistband of her pants once more and stopped, my other hand commencing a soft sweep of the skin at her stomach and sides, far more loving than tantalizing as before.

“Sleep,” I whispered into her ear, smug and satisfied at the scene I’d brought forth. I watched Feyre unwillingly fight against my touch before giving in and falling fast asleep. When at last her breathing evened, I stopped my stroking, pressed a gentle kiss against her brow, and closed my own eyes.

For the first time in many years, the darkness of my nightmares did not find me once.


	8. Chapters 49-51: I Deserved to Know

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On their way back to camp, Rhys is about to tell Feyre about the mate bond when Hybern's men shoot them out of the sky. Taken away, Feyre saves him and finds out from the Suriel the truth about her and Rhys before Rhys can tell her himself.

I woke up in precisely the same position I’d fallen asleep with my arms wrapped firmly around her. We hadn’t moved once the entire night, two puzzle pieces that once snapped together were locked in place. And Feyre - Feyre was everything. I could still taste her on my lips, feel her in my skin. I could even still smell the scent of her in the remaining moisture lingering between her thighs where her muscles had come over me.

And deep peace abided within me because of it.

_ Mate… _

_ Mate… _

_ Mate… _

The word pulsed a subtle rhythm in time with my breaths as I enjoyed the simple pleasure of holding her. She kept me safe the entire way through the night. The darkness never visited once. Feyre held eternal.

Where once I might have quivered at the thought, the idea of being so wholly connected to her lest I lose it, now it calmed me more than ever. It was finally time that I would have to tell her. I’d kept the secret for too long and I loved her too much to keep it again.

A quiet rustling alerted me to her waking. I opened my eyes right as Feyre shuffled around to face me and was filled so completely with the sense of her and - _oh_ _Feyre - darling, I love you._

I could have rested in that quiet pocket between heaven and hell content never to see the light of day again if the Cauldron would have let me. Tell her. I had to tell her.

We watched each other for a long while beneath the shelter of my wing before Feyre finally dared to break our perfect peace first. “Why did you make that bargain with me? Why demand a week from me every month?”

The reminder of the betrayal between us laid into me heavily and my eyes shuttered. The bargain. Still she thought it was  _ the bargain _ and I began to wonder if I bedded her then and there if she would still fail to recognize the bond on her own. I said an awful half truth before I could rethink it.

“Because I wanted to make a statement to Amarantha; because I wanted to piss off Tamlin, and I needed to keep you alive in a way that wouldn’t be seen as merciful.”

“Oh.”

The truth - the mate bond - hung on my lips unsung at Feyre’s disappointed answer and I wondered if vaguely some part of her knew why.

“You know - you know there is nothing I wouldn’t do for my people, for my family,” I said.  _ Nothing I wouldn’t do for you _ .

She didn’t say anything.

_ A distraction - fun. _ That was what last night had meant to her.

I unfurled my wings from around us beginning the debate of how I would tell her we were mates or if I would let our bodies continue to speak for me in my cowardice. Before I could let the guilt take hold and ruin our morning, I asked, “Bath or no bath?”

Feyre squinted in disdain. “I’d rather bathe in a stream.” I felt the discomfort of the downstairs bathroom wash over her and chuckled. Feyre bathing in a river bed was a sight I would not deny either of us the pleasure of enjoying.

“Then let’s get out of here.”

Feyre didn’t mention what had transpired between us as we flew the majority of the day over the forests of the steppes leading up to the majesty of the Illyrian Mountains, and I didn’t press her on it. I was too nervous.

There were moments throughout the day I felt the words rise to my lips and promptly die to plummet back down my throat at one look from her as she paused her magic while we practiced. She showed me everything - fire, water, wings, wind, and ice. Magic flowed from her in droves to match my own. It was an effort just to stand and not collapse from how utterly stunning she was unleashing all of her capabilities for the earth around her to see.

I knew it was the bond pressing in on me to spill ourselves to each other. I’d ignored it for too long and now it was too strong - we were too connected to keep on with this game.

But the words, the words, the damn blasted fucking words wouldn’t come out. Watching her train was a horrifying reminder of why we were here in the first place, of what she would become if she was with me. They would never stop hunting her. But I didn’t know if I could live with scraps anymore. She was becoming too tantamount to my existence to leave us unfinished like unraveled fabric.

The day grew colder and darker and I nearly let the sun set entirely before I finally took Feyre into the skies between my arms.

It wasn’t long before the curious glances she had given me while I watched her  _ watch me _ in training turned into the question that would undo us both. “What is it?” she asked.

Vision focused on the trees ahead and below us, I strained to tell her, “There is one more story I need to tell you.”

The story of us. And immediately as the depth of Amarantha and the seeds of our narrative filled my mind, it felt like too much. Too heavy to get out.

Feyre’s fingers brushed my cheek dragging my eyes to her like a magnet. She was so hard to resist and that touch - it was everything to me now. Tender and merciful as the night in my heart.

“I don’t walk away,” she said, sensing my fear. She knew me better than she realized. And it was murdering me slowly that the bond was right there hiding in plain sight for her and she still didn’t see it, but - “…not from you.”

My being melted. If anything could issue the story from me, of course it would be that, those words. Be her, be - “Feyre-”

Pain overwhelmed me as I felt shots flare through me, little needles of pain that pricked the membranes of my wings in a dozen places before expanding into an all consuming burden over me. And all I could think of, the only vision in my head as that pain took over was Feyre.

Her screams rang in my ear as we fell, a shrill cry coursing down the bond for the mate she didn’t know she had. I clutched her fiercely to me as I felt my power fade out. I cast about for it anyway to winnow back to camp, but nothing happened. No magic. No darkness. No night. Nothing came to my aid except my mate’s hands holding on to me to keep us both steady.

A fresh wave of arrows hit. I could feel my wings beginning to shred along the bones and muscles where the venom sank its fangs in and disabled me, everything that I was. My body took hits too and we fell ever lower. My essence cried out for any of my magic - something to get us through safely, but even Feyre, who’s mental shield broke for me, knew that nothing was there.

_ Feyre _ .

The mate bond thrummed to life with the urgency to protect her. I hadn’t felt it this strongly since I watched Amarantha stride towards my mate, her arms outstretched and I had known what she was going to do to her. Those hands had wrapped around her neck and I…

I broke, the last of my magic reaching out into the void and surrounding Feyre. The wind that ripped her from my arms tore my heart in two and I roared for the whole of my court to hear at losing her. But if she was safe… if separating us kept them from her even while I died, then…

_ Feyre. Feyre. My mate. Find me… _

They were my last thoughts as I hit the earth and the shackles that would permanently bind my magic away from me so long as I wore them were thrust upon my hands, and I lost all consciousness, lost my mate all over again.

I was vaguely aware of being dragged into the cave, of the men who held me with anger they relished and made sure I was awake enough to see the torturous gleam in their eyes while they strung me up along the wall.

My arms were lofted high from my sides and my wings -  _ fuck _ , my wings. I’d forgotten what this kind of pain could feel like, it had been so long since I’d been taken captive like this.

They’d left the arrows in them and already I could feel myself losing my hold on reality, on the will to live at the thought that my wings might shred.

And then the whip cracked.

A horrible  _ snap _ against the air that dealt a blow of blood across my back, shattering the skin and eventually the muscle beneath. It was unbearable. Excruciating at the best, murderous at the worst.

I couldn’t command enough strength to watch my blood drop to the floor around me as one by one, the hits fell in an endless torrent. The whip struck my wings and not even my voice cried out as I emptied of everything.

Everything except her.

_ Feyre _ , I wept.  _ My Feyre. My mate. Please… _

The whip snapped and I distantly heard one of my captors scream. The whip sent fresh waves of pain rippling down my spine and again, a male fae burst. And then the whips stopped all at once, but the shouts - they continued until I was left with nothing but silence and the scent of her filling me, pulling me back to a dull aching consciousness.

I felt a rush of wind flow across my skin as she appeared in front of me out of the air. She grabbed my face and forced me to look at her. I barely got my eyes open before I groaned, but she was there and she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. My salvation come to rescue me.

Her hands worked deftly even as they shook to undo me and my knees cracked as they hit the ground with a hard grind.

“Rhys,” Feyre said breathless. I felt her then at the call of my name - finally. Felt all of the pain and fear she felt and the love too. I felt it roar from her veins trying to reach me.

Quietly, with the only senses I had left, I stirred behind our bond. Feyre nearly fell alongside me at the flicker of my consciousness.

“Rhys,” and again the sound of my name coming from her voice rattled through me. “We need to winnow home.”

“Can’t,” I gasped. Never had it been so hard to say a single damn word.

But Feyre - I felt her magic answer her instantaneously. It simmered into a hot boil of anger and passion that ruptured and took control of her, pulling me into her body as she turned and  _ winnowed _ us out of the cave.

_ To safety. _

_ To her. _

_ Home. _

I had no idea where she’d taken us. Only that she was carrying me against her with whatever new strength had gripped her. When we landed in a new cave, the stale scent of rock and dirt that was entirely void of any other life told me it was over for the night. I collapsed with her on the ground with a groan as pain racked my body from the impact. I was cold. So cold.

“Rhys,” Feyre said, her voice wavering in the darkness. I just wanted to see her again. Just one look to save me. “I have to get these arrows out.”

_ Fuck. _

I gripped the ground, whatever I could take hold of without completely wasting myself, and prepared. I felt Feyre’s disappointment wash over the bond at how weak I was. That she had to see me like this, that she was capable of taking care of me so fiercely and wonderfully - it was a curse and a blessing in equal measure.

“This is going to hurt,” she said as her fingers traced the area around where the first arrow had slaughtered my wings. But Feyre paused and the arrow didn’t come out.

“Do it,” I said in a quick pant, my adrenaline crashing within me. I was terrified. Terrified of the pain. All those years spent Under the Mountain and never had I been tortured like this.  _ I _ was always the one who did the torturing. I didn’t know which end of it was worse to be on anymore.

The slight pull on the arrow shot a hiss out of me and again, Feyre paused. Through the ash arrow, I could feel her knife poised around the wood ready to slice.

“Do it,” I said one more time.

The pain returned in full measure as Feyre sawed. It was slow. So. Fucking. Slow.

I read her thoughts. She didn’t bother shielding them from me and I understood that going faster might kill me anyway. But it  _ burned _ .

_ My wings, my wings, my wings. _

_ My mate, my mate, my mate. _

My mate was there. And tenderly, she was holding me in her voice while she worked, carrying me away and as far from the pain of my body as she could.

“Did you know,” Feyre said, “that one summer, when I was seventeen, Elain bought me some paint? We’d had just enough to spend on extra things, and she bought me and Nesta presents. She didn’t have enough for a full set, but bought me red and blue and yellow. I used them to the last drop, stretching them as much as I could, and painted little decorations in our cottage.”

I let out a sigh of relief because I  _ did _ know. I’d seen her painting. Little bits of anything here and there. The first image I’d seen of her painter’s hands that had come to me in a dream floated to the surface of my mind right as Feyre yanked on the arrow, pulling it swiftly out of me with no warning.

“FUCK,” I roared into the echoing recesses of the cave. My body locked up, but the pain in the hole of my wing was already subsiding, dulling to an ache I could manage.

And then Feyre found the second arrow and the process started again.

So did her stories.

“I painted the table, the cabinets, the doorway… And we had this old, black dresser in our room - one drawer for each of us. We didn’t have much clothing to put in there, anyway.” She paused and waited for me to brace myself before pulling the second arrow out and starting on a third. “I painted flowers for Elain on her drawer. Little roses and begonias and irises. And for Nesta…”

She stopped her speech as the third arrow came loose and one wing was free. The tremendous burden of the pain lifting, my wing fell in sweet relief, but my chest shook uncontrollably regardless. It was involuntary at this point. Feyre moved to the other wing.

“Nesta. I painted flames for her. She was always angry, always burning. I think she and Amren would be fast friends. I think she would like Velaris, despite herself.”

All the better for Cassian, I thought to myself.

“And I think Elain - Elain would like it, too. Though she’d probably cling to Azriel, just to have some peace and quiet.”

I saw the image of her sister with my brother form in her mind, but quickly Feyre had replaced Elain with Morrigan as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do. She was right.

Another arrow had fallen and if my count was correct, I could feel only three more left. The rest of my body felt clean as I started taking inventory of my muscles. The guards for whatever reason must have seen fit to remove the arrows directly on my person while I was briefly out - the fucking idiots.

Raw from the pain and lack of use, I moaned to Feyre, desperate for further distractions about her life as I’d first known her, before she’d ever come to Prythian.

“What did you paint for yourself?”

“I painted the night sky.”

Everything - all the pain, all the agony, the shaking, the fractures, all of it stilled at those five little words. Feyre removed the sixth arrow.

“I painted stars and the moon and clouds and just endless, dark sky.”

_ Me. She painted me. I saw her and she saw me. My mate. My mate. My mate. _ I wanted to cry.

“I never knew why. I rarely went outside at night - usually, I was so tired from hunting that I just wanted to sleep. But I wonder…”

The final arrow came undone and both my wings fell equally to the ground. Feyre’s voice was thick as she gathered herself together and explained the mate bond to me that I had been trying so ardently to show her all these weeks and months.

“I wonder if some part of me knew what was waiting for me. That I would never be a gentle grower of things, or someone who burned like fire - but that I would be quiet and enduring and as faceted as the night. That I would have beauty, for those who knew where to look, and if people didn’t bother to look, but to only fear it… Then I didn’t particularly care for them, anyway. I wonder if, even in my despair and hopelessness, I was never truly alone. I wonder if I was looking for this place - looking for you all.”

The cave went silent and the world stilled as it narrowed in on Feyre coming to kneel before me.

My mate. Night everlasting. Life supernal.

“You saved me,” I said, voice rasping in an entirely new kind of pain I had only felt once before - the night she died.

“You can explain who they were later,” she said, thinking I meant the sentries.

“Ambush,” and finally I felt enough strength to piece more than a few words together. “Hybern soldiers with ancient chains from the king himself, to nullify my power. They must have traced the magic I used yesterday…” And the horrible realization of what I’d done to her - to my mate - hit me in full force. The price of our great secret if ever Feyre knew and decided to claim me. I did this to her.

“I’m sorry.”

And it would never be enough.

“Rest,” she said simply. No anger. No resentment. Just care - love.

Feyre moved towards her pack and I didn’t care what she wanted from it. I grabbed her wrist and told her the closest kernel of our truth that I could muster before I collapsed.

“I was looking for you too.”

And then I was gone.

* * *

When I woke, I was met with a thick heat wrapping around me. Feyre - Feyre was gone and it was hard not to panic that something had happened to her, but if she was hurt or worse, I would have been too.

The bond was cool between us. Quiet. She was alive and she was fine.

I scattered the blankets she had nestled me in and enjoyed some of the cool breeze flowing into the cave from outside - from where she was.

My body was still on fire. Waking was an effort. But sleeping without her was worse.

But eventually she came and my body was suddenly not the only fire in the cave as she threw a handful of something coarse onto my chest.

“Chew on that,” Feyre said and there was bite behind her words.

I picked up the pink weed of a plant she’d thrown at me and blinked wearily at her while she stared me down. Confused, I took a few bites of the plant as she had asked - no,  _ ordered _ . It tasted bitter.

And then in the blink of an eye, Feyre was in front of me with a knife to her arm. She sliced and the blood ran free and every nerve inside me wanted to fight against the harm to her body excepting for the fact that Feyre herself had done it.

And I had no idea why.

“Drink this.  _ Now.” _

She gripped me and forced me to drink. But I’d barely managed two, maybe three mouthfuls before she’d decided it was enough and had pulled away from me angrily leaving the tangy taste of her blood on my lips. Even that much separation, just the few inches she had recoiled, was unbearable.

“You don’t get to ask questions,” she said, a dangerous storm brewing. I could feel it down the bond. “You only get to answer them. And nothing more.”

My mind lagged as I caught up with her words and registered the pain leaving my body as holes closed and wounds healed. Her blood working the healing magic of the Dawn Court inside me to save me again.

Caught between the dull throb of my blood and the desire to chase Feyre down the rabbit hole of her newfound anger, I chewed slowly on a fresh piece of the weed and nodded my consent to submit to whatever interrogation was waiting for me.

Feyre stared at me hard and then, she skinned me alive with her question and it was worse than a thousand ash arrows in my wings.

“How long have you known that I’m your mate?” she asked. I watched her watch me, watch the fear course through my eyes. Watched her as I acknowledged that I would never have the privilege of telling her myself now - and she knew it.

“Feyre,” I said, that very fear freezing my bones.

“How long have you known that I’m your mate?” she said again.

My mind jumped in a quick blaze of thoughts from the lingering scent on her to the knowledge of her time in the Spring Court to the bitter weed I swallowed in my mouth.

“You… You ensnared the Suriel?” I asked.

“I said you don’t get to ask questions.” Her voice was a dangerous arrow in the night ready to take me at the smallest miscalculation. I took one more bite of the weed to prepare myself and gave her what she’d been waiting so long for. My heart broke on every word. My heart that had mended all this time with her.

“I suspected for a while. I knew for certain when Amarantha was killing you. And when we stood on the balcony Under the Mountain - right after we were freed, I  _ felt _ it snap into place between us. I think when you were Made, it… it heightened the smell of the bond. I looked at you and then the strength of it hit me like a blow.”

Slowly, I studied Feyre as the memory of that day slid into place and she watched me stumble back on that balcony while I felt the bond click between us, leaving me forever linked to her. And she was scared. Terrified.

Worse -  _ betrayed _ .

“When were you going to tell me?” she asked, the full weight of that deceit lacing her words. I felt the ash arrow go through me again - this time through my heart.

“Feyre.”

_ “When were you going to tell me?” _

“I don’t know,” I admitted, just wanting this to be over with. I wanted her. Wanted to mate with her and find our eternal connection together, but I’d ruined it. I’d ruined everything as usual and it felt like too much this time. “I wanted to yesterday. Or whenever you’d noticed that it wasn’t just a bargain between us. I hoped you might realize when I took you to bed, and-”

“Do the others know?”

“Amren and Mor do. Azriel and Cassian suspect.”

Heat flooded Feyre. Embarrassment. Rage. I couldn’t tell. Maybe it was both. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

And  _ there _ was the hurt. The wounds that opened just as sore and raw as my own as I watched us break apart in front of each other.

“You were in love with him,” I said, the unimaginable horror that was my mate belonging to another forever spilling out of me. “You were going to marry him. And then you… you were enduring everything and it didn’t feel right to tell you.”

_ Lies. Such horrible wicked excuses. _

“I deserved to know.”

“The other night you told me you wanted a distraction, you wanted  _ fun _ . Not a mating bond. And not to someone like me - a mess.”

It was still a horrible excuse for lying to her, using the Court of Nightmares that we had supposedly healed at Starfall together. But I was desperate at this point. I could see the fire growing in her eyes and I wanted to cling to any blind hope I might find that could keep the possibility of us knit together before she turned her back on me for good.

But she had promised me - she wouldn’t walk out.  _ She wouldn’t walk out. _ Not on me.

_ Please don’t. Fuck, don’t leave me in the dark. _

“You promised-” and I felt her crack inside. “You promised no secrets, no games. You  _ promised.” _

“I know I did,” I said, fighting so hard for her despite how miserably my body and mind were failing me just then. “You think I didn’t want to tell you? You think I liked hearing you wanted me only for amusement and release? You think it didn’t drive me out of my mind so completely that those bastards shot me out of the sky because I was too busy wondering if I should just tell you, or wait - or maybe take whatever pieces that you offered me and be happy with it? Or that maybe I should let you go so you don’t have a lifetime of assassins and High Lords hunting you down for being with me?”

“I don’t want to hear this. I don’t want to hear you explain how you assumed that you knew best, that I couldn’t handle it-”

“I didn’t do that-”

“I don’t want to hear you tell me that you decided I was to be kept in the dark while your friends knew, while  _ you all _ decided what was right for me-”

“Feyre-”

“Take me back to the Illyrian camp. Now.”

I don’t know at which point my lungs started gasping - choking for air, but they were.  _ Stay. Stay stay stay - please. _ “Please.”

In a flash of furry, Feyre flew at me and grabbed my hand with a force that could have leveled the mountains within which we stayed.  _ “Take me back now.” _

There weren’t any words for the emptiness that hollowed me out, for the unbearable grief that consumed me in its place as I looked at Feyre and felt myself lose her one more time.

I squeezed her hand and with no strength whatsoever - only by the desire to please her, do whatever my mate wanted, did I manage to winnow us back to camp.

Mud flew into my face as we landed. Too far from the house like I’d hoped. Now every fucking Illyrian in these damned mountains would see. See their High Lord bruised and bloodied and rejected by the woman who could have destroyed them all if she wanted - an Illyrian in her own right.

I pushed off the ground to scramble for her. All I wanted was her. Just Feyre. Just my mate.  _ My mate. My mate. My fucking mate - Cauldron just give me my mate. _

I collapsed as my arms gave out. Collapsed from that utter exhaustion of just wanting her all the time.

“Feyre,” I groaned, but she was moving towards the house where Cass and Mor were running from towards us. Cassian got to me first while Mor stopped short and I barely heard Feyre over the chaos asking Mor to be taken away - away from  _ me _ .

Mor looked pitifully at me and back to Feyre before she took her hand. “Feyre,” I pleaded one last time and then - and then.

She winnowed. Walked away exactly as she had promised she wouldn’t. Into the wind and day, my mate left me.

And I didn’t blame her one bit.


End file.
